


A Cougar and His Pride

by AngeNoir



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Elves, F/M, Feudalism, M/M, Mages, Non-Sexual Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-01-11 00:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cougar was settled into his Specialist team, resigned to border duty, when he and his teammates happen upon a runaway slave.</p><p>Who turns out to be much more than that. Suddenly, Cougar is embroiled in the politics of the Nobles, swirling inter-territorial tensions, and intrigue, entirely by chance.</p><p>Well. Chance, and following those blue, blue eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nagasvoice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagasvoice/gifts).



“We were just pretty lucky nothing more happened than a write-up.”

“You’re fucking happy with stuff you shouldn’t be happy for.”

“The boss didn’t kill us, and he had legitimate cause for doing so.”

Cougar did his best to ignore the bickering of his two teammates, scanning the horizon mindlessly. Northern patrol was one of the dullest, most difficult jobs to slog through because of its sheer repetitive scenery, the fact that it was the most boring job for the Specialist teams to do, and because quite often the only people on it were people on shit detail. Normally that would be something like the Alphas or the Foxes, but this month it was the Losers.

Cougar might have hated the detail, but he understood the need for it. He just hated the fact that Clay had gotten them into this because he couldn’t keep his dick away from a visiting ambassador’s daughter. _Everyone_ knew you didn’t fuck an elf maiden without serious repercussions.

 _Everyone_.

Except Clay, it appeared, because – for as much as their commanding officer was brilliant and wilier than a fox, his dick would reliably lead him into bad decisions.

Cougar’s bay gelding nickered and shied to one side, then began to pick up its pace, and with a frown Cougar glanced down at the beast. It was a common-stock animal, not like the warhorse for which Roque paid through the teeth, but it suited him as it rarely did anything but plod about at a steady rate. Unless it was on the track; it had some kind of racing blood in its past, because once on a track it exploded into motion. But in general the beast was placid and unflappable.

There _had_ been talk of raids of the White Ones moving this far south because of the unusually harsh winter the northern mountains were having at the moment.

He hissed, leather-gloved hands tugging lightly at the reins, and his mount stopped reluctantly. Slowly, he lifted up his bow, pulling out a common arrow out of his quiver, and watched the line of hills carefully. Ahead of him, Pooch pulled up first, his black gelding champing at its bit and raring to keep on. “What is it?” Pooch asked quietly, hand slipping to his sword.

Cougar shook his head slowly, not sure himself, only that his horse was acting different than normal. Bracing his feet in the stirrups, he raised himself up, arrow laid against the bow, though he did not draw it, not yet.

Roque dismounted from his warhorse, the mare snorting and shaking its mane roughly, and pulled out his double swords from the sword sheaths laid against his back. Both swords were huge, oversized, and Cougar could wield one or the other, but never both at the same time. Roque, however, swung them loosely from his hands as if they weighed no more than a feather to him.

Cougar would swear there was giant blood in Roque’s ancestry, but Roque claimed nothing more than the shapeshifter heritage and Cougar knew they all kept their secrets. No one in any of the Specialist teams were what anyone might call trusting and open with their pasts.

Movement at the very edge of his vision made him turn, bow coming up and arrow drawn back. It looked like… he narrowed his eyes, shook his head and let his eyes shift into his Other form, staring into the distance. It looked like a young man, very thin. Running from cover to cover.

Just one man.

A trap? Cougar considered the idea carefully and then discarded it. It still might be a trap, he didn’t doubt it, but it was unlikely that one man was a trap all by himself. Now, if there were others with him, that would change things, but Cougar could catch no scents on the wind no matter how much he strained, could see no other movement except the flutter of birds low to the ground and the scudding of clouds across the sky. The lands to the north, the ones that butted up against the White Ones’ territory, were barren for the most part, cold and dank. The few trees that grew were normally leafless throughout the year, and the brush against the ground was too small and sparse to adequately hide large predators.

He jerked his head towards the movement, and Roque handed his reins to Pooch before striding in that direction, Cougar and Pooch trailing a distance behind. It didn’t take long for the young man to notice their approach, and he froze, eyes wide, and his pupils were strange, his skin mottled with dirt and clothes torn and stained with his blood. Cracked lips parted as he let out a hissing snarl.

Roque’s eyes bled blue and his canines lengthened as he snarled back, a wolf’s snarl locked in that thick throat.

The man’s shoulders hunched and he turned on his heel and took off like a shot.

“Well, shit.” Roque stood a moment and then sheathed his blades. “Are we bringing him in to the post?”

Pooch looked doubtfully at the running man. “It’s not very likely he’s a spy. But you can’t be too careful.”

Roque let out a put-upon sigh and took off his boots, setting them on the ground. Then he shook his shoulders and head, a shake that traveled down his whole body as he shook off the trappings of humanity and fell to all fours, wolf eyes and muzzle and body massively huge, stretching and tearing the fabric of his tunic and trousers, making the leather of his swords’ sheaths creak with the movement. Then Roque was off, loping after the man.

Pooch got down off his gelding and picked up the boots. “What do you think he is?”

Cougar watched the man throw himself desperately into a burst of speed, but he was thin and shivering, obviously been through a lot, and Roque – a massive, black wolf with white tipping his tail and three paws that stood as high as a man’s chest – was fresh, ignoring the fact that Roque was better trained and a hardened warrior. Within moments, Roque tackled the man, knocking him to the ground and then standing over him with his teeth bared. After a moment, he grunted and turned his mount back towards the trail. They still had two hours of travel to go before they reached the next outpost and relaxed for the night – with this captive, it would go longer, and it might even be dark before they reached the next station.

And he didn’t want to think too carefully about the thin man being dragged by the scruff of his neck none-too-gently by Roque. If he did so, he’d know that this man had to be either a spy…

… or a runaway slave.

For the man’s sake, Cougar hoped he was a spy.

 

“This is taking us too fucking _long_ ,” Pooch whined. “We could have reached the post half an hour ago.”

Cougar glanced at the young man, hands tied behind his back and a lead from his collar wrapped around the pommel of Roque’s saddle. It wasn’t that they were moving _slow_ , not really – not as slow as they could have been, if the young man had been exhausted or ill. It was beginning to look as if the kid really was a spy.

If that was true, however, the disguise was almost too perfect. The man’s wrists were heavily scarred from his manacles, the throat also torn up and scabbed over and encrusted with dirt. His clothes were torn, and smelled of dried blood, both his and not. He was wary and suspicious – but he didn’t fight the lead. In fact, once Roque had captured him and dragged him back to the horses, he remained docile and highly cooperative, which was what led Cougar to suspect he was not, in fact, a slave.

Normally, especially if they were runaways, slaves knew that recapture meant a whipping, a brand on their shoulder marking them as a former runaway, and a return to the auction block. However, most masters wouldn’t deal with runaways, not wanting a troublesome slave in their stable, and so most runaways ended up in the northern quarries or in the southern fields, or the eastern timber farms. Hard labor, that normally ended up killing slaves within six months. Therefore, it was in a slave’s best interest to not be recaptured, or at least not be recaptured alive. Certainly, it was in a slave’s best interest to be quarrelsome once recaptured in the hopes of pissing their captors off enough to earn a quick death instead of the slow poisoning of the hard labor awaiting them.

“Shut the fuck up,” Roque said mildly. His clothes were torn and in tatters, much like the young man’s, though his was from his shift and subsequent return to his human form. “At least you’re not out in this cold without decent clothes.”

Pooch huffed and kicked his horse forward a bit, the chestnut willingly picking up the pace to ride ahead of the other three in the party. Roque watched the mage go and then glanced to his right, at Cougar. “You got something to say?” he said, and there was a dangerous glint in his eye that reminded Cougar of the times he saw Roque’s back, the whip marks and faded scars around Roque’s neck.

Cougar jerked his chin at their captive. “Hungry,” he said quietly.

“Goddammit,” Roque sighed, blowing out a huge breath of air before digging into his pack and pulling out some dried bits of meat. “You feed him.”

Snatching the thrown sack out of the air, Cougar nudged his horse closer to the walking man, eyeing the filthy brown hair and sharp features. Almost too-fair features; perhaps this man was a runaway from the White Ones, and hoped that they, as Lowlanders, would not send him back to the White Ones. Hell, if he was a runaway from the Northern Lands, it could be he didn’t know the punishment of the Lowlands for runaways.

That might explain his situation, and demeanor.

Cougar untied the sack and let the scent waft up. Immediately, the young man’s eyes glued to the sack in Cougar’s hands, and then his eyes raised to Cougar’s.

They were bright blue, a shock of color in his otherwise grimy and shabby outfit. And they were far too intelligent to be the eyes of a slave.

Not, of course, that slaves couldn’t be intelligent, and calculating – Cougar had met his fair share of slaves he’d prefer to have at his back than some of the men in the other Specialist teams – but those eyes were killer’s eyes, and they didn’t belong in the face of a man who looked to be a slave for at least the last year, if not last three or four years.

Then those eyes – softened, and that intense look disappeared behind a guileless wide-open stare.

Cougar stared for a long minute at the man, almost unaware of the fact that Roque had stopped his warhorse and Cougar’s horse, being the herd animal it was, had also stopped.

“Everything alright?” Roque asked quietly, and the young man’s shoulders hunched protectively but those blue eyes didn’t move from the bag holding the food. Cougar looked over at Roque to see he had drawn his sword and was waiting for Cougar’s word.

Swallowing, Cougar hitched one shoulder uncertainly and dug into the sack, pulling out a strip of meat and dangling it in the air. As obedient as any baby bird, the young man opened his mouth and held still, letting Cougar drop the meat into his mouth. Those strange eyes – Cougar realized they were slits, like a cat’s eyes – blinked shut in pleasure.

Slowly, Roque clucked to his mare and she began walking again. Cougar glanced down the stretch of land and realized he could see the smoke from the outpost up ahead. There, Duchess Marian would know how to handle the situation. She was a retired Specialist commanding officer – one of the very few to actually reach retirement – and one of the Lord’s martial advisors. Her troops held this outpost and kept the land clear of bandits and thieves and provided the Lord’s knights and Specialist teams with a base if they ever needed to mobilize from here. Clay would be there; he’d had to report in to Nobleman Maxwell, and so had told them to continue on their patrol and he’d meet with them at the next outpost. Between Duchess Marian and Clay, they could puzzle out the identity of the young man.

Cougar didn’t want to deal with it anymore.

So he let his bay walk on, feeding the man a steady stream of meat pieces, even as Pooch returned, impatient to get to the outpost. It _was_ getting dark, the light bleaching from the sky, and soon it would be full dark and difficult to keep an eye on their captive.

 

The Lowlands were a sprawling mess of different climes, all loosely tied under the Lord’s banner. Stretching from the eastern Namorain mountains down to the sloping western coast, up against the Northlands and stopping at the Xactlian marshes to the south, it was broken into different chunks of land, overseen by a Noble, patrolled by the Lord’s Specialist teams. They were never on the best of terms with the White Ones to the north, but their eastern and southern neighbors mixed freely with them. Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise to see an eastern trading caravan camped on the insides of the outpost’s walls. What was surprising was their captive’s narrow-eyed suspicious glances he cast at the caravan’s tents as they moved past the outer walls and towards the inner walls of the Keep, where the martial forces were fed and housed.

“Cougar.”

Cougar’s turned to look at Roque, who was dismounting.

“I have to change; can’t present our captive in this state. You and Pooch take our new friend here to the Duchess and Clay.”

Cougar squinted at him, letting out a short hiss of annoyance.

Grinning, Roque spread his arms – and, like his Other form, he was huge, and the tatters and tears of his shirt were clear and fairly obscene. Grumbling under his breath, Cougar transferred the lead of their captive to his horse and continued the walk towards the main stables with Pooch ahead while Roque went to the side-stables, and their quarters.

Pooch blinked at Cougar when Cougar caught up. “Roque left _us_ to deal with this?”

“Him,” Cougar replied.

Pooch let out an annoyed sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. “Right, then.”

Their captive was not gawking at the stone walls, the sheer size of the outpost, or the many different peoples still closing up the market even though it was full dark and the street lanterns provided the bare minimum of light. Cougar figured that he either escaped from a city as large as this, with a fair amount of foreigners, and had regularly walked the marketplace to not be surprised at the plethora of sounds and sights that normally overwhelmed shapeshifters new to the stimuli, or was too resigned to his capture and upcoming punishment that nothing could penetrate his thoughts at the moment. Still, Cougar would swear that the former didn’t make sense; this outpost was one of the few close enough to the coast to have some of the pale-skinned ship traders that were so rare to see in their lands, and those sea merchants were rare indeed. Yet the latter choice did not make sense either. A slave resigned to his fate and sunk in his own thoughts would not glower at caravans and look about absently with that calculating look on his face.

Perhaps – perhaps this was a second offense runaway? That would make a bit more sense; runaways that ran a second time were put straight to death, no chance of pardon, and it would make sense that the young man would be trying to think of ways out of his predicament.

But no, if he was a repeat offender, he’d have the brand of a runaway on his shoulder already, and the state of his clothes left practically _nothing_ to the imagination.

Come to think of it… the young man’s body was in ridiculously good shape, thin wrists and the pinched skin around his ribs notwithstanding. It was more like a swordsman’s body wasting away than a thin slave’s body putting on muscle that came with hard work; there was definition there, in shoulders and chest and lower stomach.

Biting his lip, Cougar turned his eyes away from the man’s form and looked straight ahead. It was foolish to even look, because this man was going to the hangman’s noose or the auction block, and there would be no stops in the meanwhile.

The guards at the entrance to the inner keep narrowed their eyes at their new companion. “Where’d you find him?” one of them grunted, looking mildly disgusted at his state.

Cougar didn’t say anything – he rarely did – while Pooch replied, “Out in the hills, wandering. We’re close enough to the Northlands border and have enough tensions between their tribes and our Nobles that it was too risky to let him go or kill him on sight; he might be a spy. And if he’s a runaway, the Lord’s law is clear.”

The second guard spat onto the floor – a northern insult, Cougar had gathered in his time on this patrol. Politely, he bared his teeth at both of them and nudged his horse on through the gateway.

Once inside the inner keep, small stable boys ran up to grab the reins of his horse as Cougar jumped off the back of his gelding and unwound the lead rope from his saddle, clutching it loosely in his hands. Pooch dismounted with less grace but no less competence – mages learned to ride almost before they could walk, even if they didn’t have the animalistic grace of shifters – and sighed at their new companion who rocked back and forth on his heels, staring absently at the open courtyard of the inner keep.

Cougar didn’t feel any happier about having their captive stuck to them, and he wasn’t quite sure where to take him. If this was the Lord’s Keep, they had dungeons and could place him there. Here, he was certain there were cells but he didn’t know where they were or the proper procedure for notifying the Captain of the new prisoner.

Pooch began to walk towards the side barracks instead of the main entrance to the keep, saying, “Let’s take him to the Watch Captain. With any luck, Clay will be there and can figure out whether the Duchess’s schedule allows her to oversee this situation or if we’ll have to lock him up for a few days until she’s free to make a ruling.”

At that, though, the young man – who had been perfectly docile and content to trail after the lead rope – stopped dead, and Cougar, not expecting it and following Pooch towards the barracks, nearly had the lead jerked out of his hands. Turning, he scowled at the young man, but the young man wasn’t looking up, wasn’t doing anything except not moving.

Cougar tugged on the lead, and while it made the man stumble forward, he soon righted himself, planted his feet, and growled low in his throat.

“Some kinda shifter, I guess,” Pooch muttered under his breath. “Well, listen here, you either walk willingly or be dragged, because between the two of us I guarantee that you will be dragged if necessary.”

Those blue eyes darted from Cougar to Pooch to the walls, as if the prisoner was seriously considering making a break for it. Whatever he saw on their faces made his shoulders sag and his mouth tighten.

Cougar tugged on the rope.

Reluctantly, their captive took slow steps forward, following the pull of the lead, and Pooch let out a long, controlled breath. Rubbing the back of his tattoos over his bald head and shoulders, Pooch grumbled, “Something about this doesn’t seem right.”

With a soft huff, Cougar inclined his head. He’d been trying to figure out the mystery of their captive. And it felt weird, wrong, to be calling the taller male – because Cougar realized, now, that this captive of theirs was easily taller than Cougar and Pooch both, maybe even Clay – their captive, since he never tried to run, never tried to make a break for it except at that very beginning moment. Cougar had gotten close enough to get the man’s scent, but couldn’t place the Other form – which was strange, because Cougar was one of the most traveled of all members of his Specialist team, even venturing into the elven lands to the southeast on a few occasions before finding himself a place on his team. Cougar had scented wolves and bears, lions and tigers, even a few bird breeds and seals. This Other was something completely new to Cougar.

And – well, Cougar didn’t mean to brag, but he had been a merchant guard before coming into the Lord’s service. He had seen the ancient mages that Pooch was descended from; had seen some of the original wulfenkin that werewolves claimed as ancestors. This man seemed utterly human, almost too normal, except for those too-sharp eyes and too-wild scent. His demeanor didn’t match the story those cuffs and collar told, his body had the traces of a swordsman or soldier, not a slave. None of it made sense, but neither did it add up to spy, which was the only other option besides slave Cougar could think of.

Thankfully, the Watch Captain’s office was only a few lengths into the barracks, so as Pooch knocked respectfully on the wooden door, Cougar kept an eye on the young man, who was hunching in on himself, head hung low to the ground, tremors beginning to set into his shoulders.

Perhaps the runaway slave was from here? He knew the Watch Captain, and was expecting some horrible retribution?

“Enter!”

Pooch opened the door and walked into the room, Cougar half a step behind and tugging their captive in as well. The Watch Captain, a human by the name of Justin, was leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on the desk. The man rubbed Cougar the wrong way, sneering at Cougar as if he was better than Cougar by virtue of having pure blood. Then again, he treated everyone not a human in the same manner, willing to step on or over others that he deemed lesser. His position protected him somewhat, but what really protected him was the fact that he reserved his vilest abuse for the very weak and very small in society – innkeepers, servants, slaves, and the homeless. Cougar would be very happy when, in a week, their team would move on to the next outpost.

As it was, the captain tilted his head in confusion at their prisoner who was hunched in on himself, looking particularly pathetic and weak, trembling and shaking enough for it to be noticeable. Cougar frowned at this change from the silent pillar, and caught Pooch’s concerned face.

Still, Pooch continued explaining the situation. “So we attached the lead and brought him back, which is part of the reason why we’re so late tonight. But we didn’t want him on top of a horse. And he’s fairly docile, I think. Gave us no reason for us to think he’s belligerent. I’m thinking maybe he was abandoned by a master? Because—”

But the Watch Captain – who had been lounging, and who never bestirred himself unless he absolutely had to – stood up from his desk and walked around the heavy wooden furniture, boots heavy on the stone. He wasn’t as tall as their prisoner, but still he had to grip the man’s chin and force his face to meet the captain’s eyes. Their prisoner cringed and shook, hard enough that the manacles on his wrists clattered faintly.

“Runaway,” the Watch Captain grunted. “We’ve got a slaving caravan ready to leave at first light tomorrow; we’ll sell him to them. Good job bringing him in. I’ll walk him back to the cells.”

Pooch licked his lips, looked at the man and the captain. “With all due respect, sir, I understand that you’re used to seeing this kinda stuff more than us, but we’re on tour here because of unrest in the north. And he kinda looks like he could be a White One, or from there. Got the coloring for it, at least. I was just wondering if we should bring this to the Hand of the Duchess? It’d be important to figure out if he really was a runaway. He could’ve been abandoned, as I mentioned, because he didn’t run from us. Was very obedient, everything. Had no complaints with him.”

The captain turned to meet Pooch’s eyes, and there, that was what Cougar hated the most about the man – the way he looked at Pooch, who was the most human one in their Specialist team. Roque and Cougar were both shapeshifters, Clay a seawatcher, and Pooch was only a mage. The captain’s face curled into a patronizing smile, one that put Cougar’s back up.

“Well, it’s nice of you to bring that up, it really is, and I understand your duty, but we both know it’s shit detail that’s got you on this circuit, and you’ve still got two more Keeps before you hit the coast, and then a long journey back to the capitol. The regular teams that patrol, they’ve seen this before, so you guys are new and eager to do your job, but while the capitol harps on about ‘tensions’ in the north with the White Ones, those sniveling bastards never crawl out of their caves and actually move into the Lowlands. This is just what it looks like, no need to complicate it.”

A vein in Pooch’s jaw ticked, but he inclined his head. “As you say, sir. We’ll just be on our way, then—”

The door behind them opened, and Cougar had never been so happy to see Clay in all his life.

“It’s colder’n a White One’s balls out here,” Clay grumbled. “Keep your damned buildings so fucking drafty…” He trailed off, staring at Pooch and Cougar. “There a problem with my men, Justin?”

The Watch Captain’s face tightened. If Cougar hadn’t been looking closely at the captain’s eyes, watching how the captain had been treating Pooch, he wouldn’t have seen the flash of hatred across the man’s face. Which was particularly troubling, because Clay had known this captain, talked about how they had trained together in the Lord’s Academy in their youth, and thought of the man as a friend.

“No, no problem at all, Frank,” the Watch Captain replied easily, the flash gone and he was just an easy-going man with a charming smile. “They were just bringing a situation to my attention and I just finished dealing with it. We’re good.”

“Yeah?” Clay asked, squinting at them closely. Cougar could forgive his suspicion; Pooch and Cougar weren’t as bad as Roque was when Roque was bored, but they could come close to it.

It seemed that the captain, however, felt Clay was questioning him rather than their behavior, because he squared his shoulders. “I said it’s fixed, Frank, we’re good here. Your boys were just turning over a runaway.”

That got Clay’s attention, and he studied the man standing in the middle of the floor with the captain. After a moment, he shook his head slowly. “Well, you gonna clean him up?”

“What?”

Clay shrugged one shoulder. “You can’t expect he’s comfortable like that, yeah? And he’s got to get a trial before being resold, and it seems kinda cruel to keep him like that overnight, or for longer than that, considering the Duchess has got a lot on her plate at the moment with all the noise the White Ones are making. Something’s really got them riled up, and a lot of her good men are keep regular watches on the border.”

“There’s no need to bother the Duchess with one slave, one that’s still got manacles and a collar on. It’s clear what happened here,” the captain pointed out. “We got a slave caravan heading inland, to the South. If he’s not sold by the time the caravan’s reached the marshes, it’d be because fever got him. Good, strong – he’d make a fine farmhand.”

Clay rocked back on his heels, glanced at the trembling man there. “He looks like he can’t be more’n twenty. That young, and that good looking? He’s got a master searching for him somewhere. Why don’t you do this – tell the caravan you’ve got a potential addition, show him to them, agree upon the price, but that they won’t get him until tomorrow. Let me go see if the Duchess and her Hand are available. We’re remote enough that she’ll know if a Noble around here lost a slave. I don’t see where else he could have come from except a Noble; slaves generally haven’t had any experience in living off the land.”

With gritted teeth, the captain nodded. “Sounds sensible,” he said blandly, and Cougar wondered if Clay picked up on the hostility. Certainly Pooch did – those dark eyes narrowed, and the tattoos curling around the bare skin seemed to flex a moment. “But I gotta say, Frank, these things normally work themselves out without bothering the Duchess. I don’t think she’ll like being asked to address something so far beneath her.”

Clay smiled easily, a hint of boyish charm twinkling in his ocean-colored eyes. Seawatchers weren’t all that different from humans, Cougar realized now, looking at the captain and the slave and then Clay. Clay didn’t have any of the defining characteristics of the more magical races – not the dark skin, not the slanted eyes or pointed ears, and not the slit pupils. In fact, Cougar began to realize, it was entirely possible that the captain did _not_ know Clay was magic-born.

…That might explain why they were friends, when it came to it.

Pooch was edging towards the door, and Cougar took a few steps back as well.

“You’re probably right,” Clay laughed, clapping a hand against the captain’s back. “Still, what’s the use of having the advantage of leaving soon if you can’t piss off the people who won’t be coming with you?”

The Watch Captain’s face moved into a charming grin, even as he turned back to the prisoner and grabbed the lead rope tightly. “Well, I’ll just shift him to the cells, then. Will you speak to her soon?”

“Yeah, yeah, I should,” Clay nodded. “Catching her before dinner would be best. I came in to see if you’d go for a drink at the tavern, and a game of dice, actually. Been freezing my balls off trying to get here before dark.”

“This?” the captain scoffed, tugging the taller man roughly out of the office, past Cougar and Pooch, and down the line of cells, followed by Clay. “This is nothing; this is our warm season! There isn’t snow on the ground, is there?”

Clay made a remark about what snow was good for that Cougar didn’t entirely catch – he was watching the man stumble and struggle to keep up with the Watch Captain’s jerking. For a moment, those blue eyes caught his, and then Pooch took Cougar’s elbow, breaking the connection. The three men went around the corner, and Cougar felt strangely unsettled by the entire exchange.

“Tell me that that felt as creepy for you as it did for me.”

Cougar nodded slowly, feeling his Other itch underneath his skin. But there was nothing he could do, no reason he could name for why it felt as if the captain was merely patronizing them. What would it matter whether the slave was sold to this caravan or the next? Why was there no effort made towards finding the original master?

…Was the man even a slave?

Cougar had his doubts, and clearly Pooch did as well, but Roque came upon them then and, slinging an arm around their necks, dragged them out of the inner Keep and out towards the businesses and taverns for the evening meal.

 

Later that night, Cougar was sitting on top of the Keep’s inner walls, staring up at the moon and enjoying the bite of cold wind against his skin, when he heard a rustling noise further down the wall. This late, only the watch should be out, patrolling the walls, but their routine didn’t take them near here for a while yet. Standing – Cougar did not have his wide-brimmed hat with him now, nor his thick cape, just his tunic, trousers, and soft-soled boots – he slipped into the shadows and carefully let the Other peek out through his eyes, making his night vision sharper.

To see the prisoner from that morning come up the stairs silently, dressed in a tunic that looked a bit too small for him and no trousers or shoes, a pack slung across his chest and tight to his back.

Escaping again – probably stole those supplies and clothes, from the looks of it. Cougar narrowed his eyes and braced himself. He was shorter than the male, perhaps just about the same age, and certainly more muscled than the near-emaciated form that was carefully letting down a rope and securing it. He should be able to easily capture the runaway and take him back to the cells.

How did he get free in the first place?

Shifting onto the balls of his feet, he readied himself for the leap. Should he transform into his Other form? It would give him the clear advantage, but it would mean tearing his clothes, and the sound of that might startle the runaway. Additionally, while he was one of the most controlled shapeshifter he knew of, including Roque, that didn’t change the fact that if the runaway struggled or fought, his Other form could do – and would do – serious damage. No. Best to remain human and—

Those blue eyes snapped over to his dark gaze and stared. Startled, Cougar hesitated for half a second before he jumped forward, moving to pin and immobilize.

That face, so placid and open, so easy and gentle, twisted into resignation even as the man twisted away from Cougar’s leap wickedly fast, grabbed Cougar’s wrist, and smeared some liquid paste into Cougar’s face.

Cougar let out a shout of pain and surprise, feeling as if thick cloth was pulled over his ears and nose and eyes, and then he blacked out.


	2. Chapter 2

Cougar almost always came awake suddenly, unless a great deal of alcohol had been involved the previous evening. Which made sense, because his head hurt dreadfully and he could swear he heard a drumbeat pounding away in a slow and steady monotone.

—But those weren’t drums. Those were hooves.

His memory came flooding back to him and he jerked, eyes flying open as he tried to lunge forward. Beneath him, the rocking he’d thought was in his own mind shifted, shied to one side, and nickered. He was tied, foot to stirrup, hands to pommel, on a horse, the barefoot and bare-legged slave walking at a brisk trot ahead, the reins in his hand. When the horse shifted and made noise, he turned around to face Cougar.

Now, in the light of the day, Cougar could see that he had gotten marginally clean at one point, though dirt was still smudged on his face and there were still cuts and gashes up and down the backs of his legs and arms. “You’re awake!” he crowed.

Cougar goggled at him. “You can talk,” he replied. Not his most brilliant answer, nor a response that got to the meat of the matter – namely, that the slave was obviously not a slave and had Cougar captive.

“I can! I don’t think you realize how difficult it is to remain silent for so long, at least for me, because let me tell you friend, the remarks I could make about your giant Wolf-friend, well, let’s just say I’m glad he walked off and left me with the mage. And you, of course. You were too curious, you know – you must be a cat type, of some kind. You also must have had some part of you shifted into your Other form last night, because let me tell you, good sir, you were not supposed to black out and shout out an alarm. Shoving it into your mouth should have just made it difficult for you to talk, let alone shout, for a good few hours. Instead, it’s been nearly a full day and you’re only just waking.”

Cougar looked around at the flat plain, studded with brush and stunted trees here and there. There wasn’t a road he could see anywhere in sight. Cross-country, then, most likely to make it harder for people to follow him. His feet and legs were still dusty from the ground and cut up from rocks and the grass that switched his bare shins.

Cougar dragged his eyes away from trailing those legs up to where the short tunic barely covered enough to be decent and instead glowered at the man.

“I’m sure you don’t care, but my name’s Jensen. Jake Jensen. I’m sure it doesn’t matter where we’re going to you, either, but let’s be clear – you didn’t give me much choice, dropping like that in front of me.”

“You did not have to take me.”

The man scratched at the stubble around his face, those blue eyes both hard and sympathetic at the same time. “I really kinda did. See, as much as I’m glad your commanding officer stepped in and spoke up for me, that doesn’t change the fact that he interfered with Justin’s plans. If you were found limp on the ground with nothing wrong with you, not a knock on the head or a wound or anything, you’d be found guilty of aiding and abetting an escaped slave – the punishment of which, as I’m sure you know, is slavery for yourself as well. My way, you would have had to go and get the watch, bring them back up to me, and the mystery of your inability to speak would be quickly found out. But you passed out, creating an easy scapegoat that wouldn’t be able to defend himself until long after decisions were made and sentences were carried out. This way, the watch on the outer wall knows you are my prisoner, and there’s less chance you’ll die when your team comes for you. They _are_ coming for you, I expect.”

Cougar nodded slowly.

 A big grin split the man’s face, and he spread his hands expansively. “Well, then, I just need to get a bit farther until I can find a place that will hold you and that isn’t too far away from civilization and dump you there. But as of this moment I’m kinda in a rush, so we’ll be moving quickly until I’m sure I’m ahead of the caravan.”

Cougar frowned. Ahead of the caravan? None of this made sense, and he glared at the man.

The man – Jensen – shrugged easily. “I’ve got to beat the head of the caravan, Wade, to the capitol. That’s really all you need to know right now. If I can catch up Wade’s lieutenants, that would be awesome as well, but the capitol’s my main goal. If I stop the horse to give you water, will you be a little prick and spill it, or actually drink it?”

Cougar considered how dry his throat was, and how much his head ached. “Drink,” he said shortly.

“Man of few words? Or shifter of few words, I suppose, that counts too. Not to people like Justin or – but none of that matters. I suppose I could dump you here, only I’m not sure you’d survive being tied up and left out. Not sure whether your team’s picked up my trail or not, figured out my path. I’m trying to avoid them which is difficult when straight lines might be the fastest, but roads would cut this journey short by two or three days at least.”

As the man – Jensen – babbled, he pulled the horse to a stop and motioned for Cougar to bend down, holding out a flask. Grudgingly, Cougar did so, putting his mouth to the opening and greedily drinking down water as quickly as possible.

Only when he was done drinking and could not possibly drink another drop did Jensen take the flask away and cap it. That seemed odd, and Jensen led the horse on for a bit before Cougar realized what was wrong with the gesture.

There was no water here, nothing where Jensen could refill his flask and make certain they didn’t dehydrate. He hadn’t told Cougar to stop, and had in fact allowed Cougar to drink his fill – more than his fill, really.

After a few more moments of silence – from Cougar, since Jensen was humming to himself as he led the horse on – Cougar shifted and said quietly, “You are not a slave.”

“Oh, I was. A long time ago,” Jensen said easily, not turning around. “But it helped that I was the child of a slave. It meant my price was much lower, and I could buy my freedom quickly. My mother wasn’t so lucky, but yes. I was a slave once.”

Cougar let the silence stretch, until the man began chattering again, like a bird. “Now, I’m whatever I need to be. A runaway, or a merchant. A guard, or a soldier. A tinkerer. I do enough to get by and normally our paths wouldn’t even cross. You probably wouldn’t believe me, but I’ve seen you before, at Court, at the Lord’s castle. You and your team.”

That was something hard to believe. This giant, going unnoticed? And Cougar never seeing him – Cougar, who was the best long-range fighter on all the Lord’s Specialist teams? Roque had never seen him, when Roque was the most paranoid and cagey bastard Cougar had ever known?

“But that’s not what you’re asking right now, I assume,” Jensen continued on blithely. “You’re asking what I really am, and that’s not something I can easily answer. Commissioned thief is probably the closest. Stealing things from trinkets to secrets, lives to loves.” Jensen winked saucily at Cougar. “You look like you’ve stolen a few loves yourself.”

Cougar’s cheeks flushed and he looked straight ahead, as Jensen chortled and continued on like a magpie.

 

The easy rocking motion of the horse stopped, jerking Cougar from his half-doze to blink blearily around. If he had to guess, looking at the tiny spring and slightly taller trees, they were moving into the woods of the east. Perhaps they were only two or three days ride from the Eyr, which meant that instead of heading south and a bit east, his captor – Jensen – had traveled mostly east, with some southward movement to avoid the towns that dotted the Navarr river that ran close by the North Road.

Jensen had tied the horse to the nearest tree, and some of the fuzziness had disappeared from Cougar’s limbs, but still when he stretched out to his Other form, he found it kept from him by what felt like a wall of glass, separating him from it, as it paced on the other side. Scowling, he watched as Jensen set his pack on the ground and pulled out the flask he had offered to Cougar earlier in the day. Filling it at the spring and corking it, he rummaged about until he found strips of dried meat and hungrily devoured one.

Cougar looked, really _looked_ , at the man hunched on the ground in front of him. His hair, now not encrusted with dirt, looked to be sand colored, and though he seemed confident and steady, his fingers trembled slightly. The bruises and cuts on his lower legs were stark in the moonlight – and the moon was high in the sky, providing light to see with (even though Cougar missed his night vision desperately, as one might miss a limb). Jensen had continued to talk throughout the day until Cougar tuned him out, angry and frustrated with Jensen in general and at himself in particular for being captured.

(His team would never let him hear the end of it.)

So he’d fallen into a doze, ignoring the fact that he’d been out for most of the morning and afternoon, and apparently Jensen hadn’t stopped at sunset but had pressed on. It must be near midnight, with the moon that high. So, desperation was clear. Jensen was either running from someone or running to someone, and why he couldn’t just leave Cougar behind was a mystery.

But the man hunched over the pack, carefully rationing out only two strips of meat for himself while still hungrily licking his fingers clean of every possible morsel, did not seem so frightening. Yes, there was nothing about him Cougar could trust, even the name that Jensen had given him, but it didn’t change the fact that even if this man was a mass murderer or a traitor or a spy, he was very young. Clay had placed him at twenty – Cougar, who had seen twenty-two summers, was willing to say less than that, perhaps seventeen or eighteen summers. He hadn’t been branded as a runaway before, and he knew enough about acting like a slave that Cougar was inclined to believe that he had been a slave and bought his freedom at some point. Either that, or had been a successful runaway, but then why had he been on that part of the North Road, hurt and stumbling around? Filthy and weak, and yet willing to accept capture at their hands?

Well. That wasn’t quite right, was it? He was willing to accept capture from Cougar and Roque and Pooch, and it was only when they turned him over to the Watch Captain that he tried to escape. So perhaps that part of his claim was true – he had seen them before, and perhaps trusted them to hear his side or take his side. Certainly, trusted them enough that he never tried to slip the ropes, not once.

Cougar belatedly realized that, distracted from the short tunic that showed off muscled thighs and legs, he hadn’t noticed the collar and manacles, ugly circlets of iron, were still clasped around Jensen’s neck and wrists. After a moment, Jensen wiped his fingers against the hem of his tunic and heaved a sigh. Lifting up three strips of meat, Jensen brought them over to Cougar and then paused.

“See, if I untie you, you’re either going to run, and manage to head me off, or you’re going to kill me, which would be unfortunate for me, or you’re going to capture me, which also wouldn’t be good. I couldn’t in good conscience leave you to take the fall but I’m certainly not going to make it easier for you to capture me. When I’m sure I’m close enough to the capitol, I’ll leave you behind, never fear. As it is, your team will be tracking me and Justin and Wade will trust your team will kill me or capture me. Thing is, I’m betting that I can evade your team for a while, at least long enough to make a difference. If I can’t, or if they catch up too quickly, well, you’re a hostage. Plus.” He stopped, rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “I know traps and things, and I can put them together in a pinch if I need to. But I don’t want to! So we’ll see.”

Pausing, he took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “ _But_ that means I can’t untie you, or leave you in a position you can escape. If I undo a hand, I’ve pretty much cut off both my legs at the knee. So I’m going to have to feed you these.”

He turned to look back at his pack, and then at the horse, and then at Cougar. “I had also intended to leave you up there all night, but if I’m considering a piss, I’m sure you are too.”

Just hearing the words made Cougar’s bladder cramp painfully, reminding him of how much water he’d drank and how he hadn’t sweated enough of it out over the course of the day.

“So. Give me a moment to figure this out.”

So saying, Jensen walked back to his pack and set the three pieces down. The other strips of meat – Cougar couldn’t see clearly enough in the moonlight to count them, or get an accurate read on how much supplies Jensen had left – Jensen wrapped up in oilskin and folded back into the pack. He pulled out a length of rope and a blanket, considered very carefully a moment, before heaving a sigh.

Then, he came over to Cougar and eyed him. “You need to piss, and I’ll untie you for that, and for you to shit. Then we’re going to figure this out. I guess if I stick around close enough to you and hobble your feet together, I’ll have a fair chance of stopping any attempt you might make.”

Cougar found it very odd that Jensen narrated exactly what he was going to do before he did it – it meant he knew what Jensen planned and knew what to brace for. He should have, by all rights, at that moment made a break for it. When Jensen undid his feet from the stirrups, he should have kicked, swung off, made the horse panic and set his teeth to the rope keeping his hands to the pommel. He should have done a lot of things.

Looking at the thin fervor at which Jensen acted – and for all that Jensen seemed competent, it was clear he had never had a captive before – Cougar didn’t. He waited, bided his time. He told himself he would have another opportunity, and he could learn more about his captor if he stuck around instead of escaping right this minute.

(Curiosity and cats, he had been told over and over, went hand in hand.)

So he sat, quiet and docile, as Jensen finished untying his other leg, then undoing the rope that kept his bound hands to the pommel (but not the rope that bound his hands together). Then, Cougar let out an undignified squawk as Jensen gripped his waist and _lifted_ him out of the saddle, setting him gently on his feet.

Cougar tried to take a step and nearly collapsed.

“Whoa, easy there, you’ve been riding for about twenty hours or so, so it’s no wonder you’re a bit shaky on solid ground.” Jensen’s hands steadied Cougar’s shoulders, helping him find his footing, and then led him away and downwind from the camp. “So, go ahead and relieve yourself, and then we’ll settle down for the remainder of the night.”

Cougar thought Jensen was very optimistic about Cougar’s ability to stand and handle his business on his own, but made the best of it, staggering and wobbling where he stood as he pissed and shit as needed and cleaned as best he could with the resources immediately on hand. Jensen didn’t offer to help – well, really, it would be more accurate to say Jensen started to step forward and offer help, and then seemed to think better of it and change his mind partway. Instead he stood, not too far away but not too close, and kept an eye on Cougar until Cougar retied his trousers, and then took Cougar by the elbow to help him back to the campsite.

In a way, Cougar was grateful for the support, because he actually did need it and it gave him a reason for not trying to escape right away. He leaned heavily on Jensen, nodded his thanks when Jensen propped him up against the trunk of a tree and carefully handed over the three strips of meat he’d pulled out earlier. Cougar was starving enough that he wolfed two down before he realized, and then carefully ate and savored the last piece. They weren’t particularly long strips of meat, and Cougar wondered why Jensen was being so stingy with them. Was he almost out? It would be most unpleasant if that happened mid-journey, when Jensen would be loath to stop and hunt something. Cougar and Roque, being shapeshifters, regularly needed to eat practically twice what Pooch and Clay did when on rations.

“Alright, so here’s what we’re going to do,” Jensen said quietly, and before Cougar could look up to meet his gaze, Jensen took the blanket he’d been holding earlier and wrapped it around Cougar’s body, pinning his arms to his sides, and then tied the blanket in place. Leaning away, he nodded decisively. “It’s gonna get cold, so I’d think you’d have wanted that blanket soon enough.” Picking up one of the ropes still hanging from the stirrups of the picketed horse, he tied together Cougar’s ankles and then brushed away the twigs and stones from the area before sitting back on his heels. “Well. I’m gonna rest for a bit, but we’re going to be up and moving before sunrise, so if you don’t get a lot of rest, you can doze on the ride.”

Cougar licked his lips and considered his predicament. He didn’t know what was keeping him from pulling on his Other form, but he was sure he could try and make a break for it now.

And do what? Roll away? Hop? Putting the idea away, he moved onto his back and stared up at the clouds scudding across the night sky.

When Jensen moved away, he watched Jensen until he sat on the grass by his pack and curled up into a fetal position. Come to think of it, it was a bit chilly. Cougar normally didn’t mind – his homeland, in the mountains, got this cold pretty often during the summer, and here it was only fall. Still, Cougar was indeed thankful for the blanket, though it was thin. And he _had_ a good tunic, and trousers – Jensen looked to have nothing but his loincloth on beneath the tunic, and he was definitely shivering. Cougar felt a bit bad for having the blanket when it was clear someone else needed it more than he did.

…Then again, this man was holding him hostage.

Not very well, but it was the intention of it and all.

 

Sometime in the middle of the night – Cougar had let himself drift, but he foresaw another day of riding and that ceaseless talk, so he didn’t think he was shorting himself of rest if he stayed up – when the moon had set but the sky was still dark and full of stars, a glowing light made him turn his head and watch an incorporeal form drift across the earth, nose to the ground.

Very, very carefully, watching Jensen every moment – who was tossing and turning restlessly, face set in pained lines – Cougar licked his lips and let out a low whistle.

The head of the form popped up, and it was a hound, ears perked up. After a few minutes, it bounded towards him, paws never quite hitting the earth, until it skidded to a stop by his side, panting soundlessly. Its jaw dropped open and Cougar could hear Pooch’s voice from its throat.

“Cougs? You alright?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

Adjusting his voice accordingly, Pooch lowered his voice and said quietly, “What happened?”

“I do not know. The prisoner we brought in is… not what we expected.”

“Cougs, I’m short on time and he’s messed with your scent trail and tracks – Clay and Roque can’t find your trail. Do you know where you are?”

“No.”

“Why did he take you? What’s going on?”

Cougar bit his lip, looking over at the huddled form, and then sighed. “I saw him escaping, and he – put some type of paste on my face and in my mouth. Some kind of potion. I cannot access my Other. But he is not used to having a hostage.”

“You can get free?”

Again, Cougar hesitated. “I want to see this play out,” he said finally. “You and I both know something was wrong with the way the Watch Captain reacted to him.”

There was a very long pause, and Cougar wondered if the spell was already starting to break apart – it did so after too much time had passed. But then Pooch said, “Clay wants to know what the fuck you think you’re doing.”

“You can track me. It shouldn’t be hard. But I want to try and get out of him what his purpose is.”

Another pause, and then Pooch replied, “Clay says you’re risking your life for no good reason, and he doesn’t want to have to try and learn another long-range specialist’s quirks.”

At that, Cougar smiled, because once Clay started complaining about finding a new person for the team because of some crazy stunt one or the other (sometimes all three) were pulling, it meant he accepted their reasons for it and was just being a grumpy old man because he could. “Tell Clay that when you get close, try not to scare the kid off. He’s much younger than Clay guessed.”

 

After the hound bounded away, losing more and more light and more and more of its form as it did so, Cougar leaned his head back and stared up at the sky. He didn’t know what compelled him to stay.

…Well, alright, he knew part of why he decided to stay, and his soft heart wasn’t well known but was present. He’d never thought with his dick the way Clay seemed to so often, though – that was new. The kid was sweet and kind and cleaned up well, too. Cougar wondered, not for the first time, if he was making a mistake and this would end badly, for himself or for Jensen.

At least he wasn’t on border duty anymore. That was a definite plus in his book.

He dozed again, only to be jerked fully awake by Jensen’s harsh cry – it would have been a terrified scream, Cougar could tell, only Jensen muffled it last minute, locked it in his throat, and so he ended up letting out a hoarse, gasping cry. Cougar slanted his gaze over to Jensen’s huddled form, watching his shoulders shake and tremble. It was a struggle to remember this kid had locked his Other form away somehow, that this kid had plans for when he reached the capitol that could range from picking the pocket of someone specific to murder to worse. When he watched those too-thin shoulders and skinny arms curl protectively around his chest, tunic stretched too-tight over arms and stopping too short to expose the man to the cold air of the northern night, well.

Soft-hearted. Pooch would cackle like a madwoman and Jolene would smirk, while Clay and Roque would look despairingly at him.

It took Jensen a few minutes to gather himself, draw himself up. He moved to the spring, and in the early, pre-dawn light, Cougar watched as Jensen cupped his hands and splashed his face, getting some of the dust off his calves and arms, and then scrubbed his hands thoroughly before cupping them again and drawing water up to his mouth to drink.

Grew up in a noble house, or around a healer, Cougar noted. Most commoners and slaves didn’t think – or care – to get their hands clean before drinking from them.

Then Jensen shifted and placed his feet in the water, hissing a little and groaning. Cougar saw the dirt-encrusted cuts and blisters, the thick callouses that indicated Jensen regularly went barefoot, and winced in sympathy. All the walking they did yesterday, it was a wonder Jensen’s feet weren’t worn down to nubs.

After soaking his feet a bit, Jensen staggered to his feet and slipped towards the bushes to relieve himself. When he came back, he moved to Cougar’s side and nodded towards the brush where Cougar had gone last night and where Jensen had just gone. “You need? We’re not going to be stopping for a while, so.”

Cougar felt his stomach grumble, aching against his spine. He could go without food – he’d done it before – but he’d never been _this_ hungry; the last full meal he ate had been over twenty-four hours ago, and in those twenty-four hours he’d had nothing but three strips of meat. His Other form was huge, and he wasn’t very large but his metabolism moved very fast. Jensen obviously heard the grumble and he frowned a little before letting out a sigh.

“We may end up stopping, then,” he muttered under his breath, moving to the pack he’d left on the ground and pulling out the oilskin and carefully unwrapping two pieces of meat, laying them against the ground as he rewrapped the rest of them and stuffed them in his pack. “You’re gonna eat while riding, though. We need to be on the move if we’re going to beat the caravan into the capitol.”

“Caravans move slowly,” Cougar pointed out.

Jensen’s shoulders tightened, even as he untied Cougar’s ankles and physically lifted him up and sat him on top of the horse. Cougar let out a disgruntled growl – he did not appreciate being physically picked up and manhandled in this manner – but Jensen just began tying his feet to the stirrups, starting with the rope he’d just undone from Cougar’s ankles. “They do,” he said quietly. “But I don’t want to just beat the caravans. Some warning would be nice, too. Preparation. In any case.” Jensen moved to the other side of the mount and finished tying Cougar’s other foot, and then reached up to undo the rope holding the blanket and Cougar’s arms tight against his body. “I’ll give you a bit of slack in your arms, so that you can hold your food and eat it, but I obviously don’t want you untying your feet.” He grinned a little, and some of the boyish charm shone through. “I’ve seen what you can do with your feet when you want to.”

Once Cougar’s hands were tied together, and tied again to the pommel – though with the promised slack that allowed him to bring his hands halfway up, and he had to bend his head down to meet his fingers to eat the food Jensen placed in his hands – he chewed the dried meat contemplatively as he watched Jensen shake out the blanket, consider putting it into the pack, and then draping it around his own shoulders. The younger man _did_ look cold. Cougar didn’t understand why he would be, since the races that lived in warmer climes were not nearly as fair-skinned as this young man. Perhaps he came from along the coast; the sea-peoples of the west weren’t as fair and pale as the White Ones to the north, but they definitely did not have the complexion of himself, or of Pooch or Roque, and they were the stereotypical races of the Lower Kingdoms. Those that lived on the coast were used to cold, but not a lot of cold.

And the short tunic, while providing an interesting view for Cougar, could not be doing much to keep Jensen warm. It barely covered what it needed to, and it certainly wasn’t in any way thick. Looked like a sleeping tunic, even.

Jensen didn’t talk, either, just kept the horse’s reins in his hands as they walked across plains. Once or twice, Cougar saw smoke in the distance, and he knew that as they got closer to the forest, there would be more logging communities and hunting towns. As of now, they were moving through the plains at a startlingly quick rate – never faster than a short trot, that the horse and Jensen could manage together, but always moving east and tilting south. Sooner or later, they were going to hit the Northwest Capitol Road, one of the great roads that had been built by the Lord and maintained so that traders and caravans could move freely. There were always settlements around and along the road, and Cougar wondered how Jensen planned to avoid them.

As the sun rose, and the day warmed – it was still fall, and they were still close enough to the Northlands that fall wasn’t the easy summer-like weather of the southern farmlands – Jensen began to perk up more, and by noon he was singing a tuneless song that Cougar tried not to let grate on his nerves. Jensen may _think_ he was a good singer, but he was lacking in many areas severely. Namely keeping a tune, but his sense of rhythm and ability to remember the lyrics that went with the tune were other areas in which he needed attention.

By midafternoon, Cougar could not take it anymore and interrupted Jensen’s warbling. “What’s in the capitol you hope to find?”

Jensen’s shoulders tightened, and he didn’t make any noise for a bit before saying in a low voice, “I wish I could, but I can’t tell you that. You – well. Your team, at least, but maybe you too, you are a lot more skilled than I am and I freely admit that I won’t be able to hold you for long. Thankfully, the road to the capitol is not long, just a week or two’s amount of walking with the straight line we’re taking east and then south, which is about how long it would average a slow moving, _mounted_ caravan to make it to the capitol using the roads.”

Cougar calculated in his mind before slowly shaking his head. “Caravans take longer than that, especially from the direction they were moving. At least, I assume you are talking about the caravan the Watch Captain was going to sell you too?”

“He was never intending to sell me,” Jensen sighed. “And yes, I am talking about that caravan, and had actually originally supposed to be traveling with it.”

Cougar stared at the man for a few minutes in shock. So Jensen _was_ a spy.

Turning, Jensen caught Cougar’s face and frowned. “What? What’s gotten you in a twist?”

“You are – you have slave cuffs on. And a collar.”

Jensen smiled bitterly. “I do, yes.”

“You are – we assumed a runaway.”

After a long moment, Jensen hitched one shoulder up, not looking back at Cougar as they continued to walk. “I know what you guys assumed. If you had taken me to the Duchess’s Hand, I would have done fine and that would be the end of it, but I get that you guys couldn’t just request an audience with the Hand, and the Duchess probably needed him for something anyway. But you guys took me to Justin—”

Ignoring the fact that Jensen casually talked about the Duchess, her hand, and called the captain by his first name, Cougar cut in to say, “You told me you were a thief. Not a slave.”

“I told you I become what I need,” Jensen corrected.

That wasn’t what Cougar was trying to ask, and either Jensen was being deliberately obtuse or Cougar wasn’t explaining what he was trying to ask very well. “How were you traveling with them if you were wearing slave gear? They are a slave caravan, are they not?”

“Oh, you know the answer to that, I’m sure,” Jensen murmured.

They moved on through the brush, Cougar turning over this bit of information and trying to make it fit. The head of the caravan – Jensen had deliberately labeled him. Jensen knew something about him? Certainly Jensen knew something; he’d known his name. But the way that Jensen had singled him out meant that Wade was his target for whatever Jensen wanted to do. Did Jensen think that, in the capitol, Wade would be less guarded? Surely not – in the capitol, Wade was more likely to be able to hire guards, more likely to be around his peers and notice one runaway slave lurking about.

One _pretend_ -runaway slave.

And if Jensen had been traveling with the slave caravan by pretending to be an actual slave, how had he come to be where Cougar and Pooch and Roque had found him? How had he come to be so beat up? No slaver gave up a slave – it was like a gold merchant willingly dropping jewels. Even the worst and most belligerent slaves could be sold to the labor markets.

None of it made sense, but Jensen was rambling on about a young girl named Bethany who was apparently a little devil, and Cougar, for all he was curious, found himself caught up in the stories of Bethany trying to convince her mother to allow her to keep a fox kit.


	3. Chapter 3

Their travel settled into a routine – up before dawn, walking the entire time, rarely stopping for more than allowing Cougar to relieve himself and stretch his legs for a _very_ short bit, stopping well after moonrise, minimal amounts of food, being trussed up like a turkey, and then watching Jensen toss and turn all night while waiting for Pooch’s hound, reassuring Pooch and the other two that he was still alright and nothing adverse had happened to him. Throughout the next few days, Cougar developed a hatred for the saddle. The horse, at least, was extremely affable – Cougar wasn’t sure from whom Jensen managed to liberate it – and had an easy gait that didn’t make it harder for Cougar to withstand the saddle sores and pain in his thighs and legs. Jensen always took care to give it grazing time periodically throughout the day. Water was also provided for the horse at this time, and for Cougar. Cougar watched Jensen closely at these break times, and Jensen was jittery and nervous, always checking behind them (which was smart instincts, since Cougar knew his team was within distance of him and Jensen). But Jensen never drank half as much as he gave the horse or Cougar, and he certainly ate less than Cougar and the horse did. While Cougar couldn’t say he was getting enough to eat – hunger was certainly an almost constant companion by now – he was certainly getting food more often than Jensen.

It was difficult to express that to Jensen, however. How did one tell their captor ‘I’m afraid you aren’t eating enough and need to rest yourself better’? Especially when Cougar knew, at this point, it was just his curiosity – alright, and lust – motivating this care.

During the day, Cougar dealt with the pain of riding as best as he could, and to be fair Jensen did try and pad the saddle a bit to prevent sores from building up, and close to the end of the day he would let Cougar walk alongside the horse, keeping to the other side of the horse (Cougar’s hands remained tied to the pommel during these walks, with little to no slack). Otherwise, Cougar dozed and slept and other times paid close attention to Jensen’s rambling speech. Through it, he learned that Bethany was Jensen’s niece, and that Jensen’s half-sister was Bethany’s mother. He learned Jensen was used to traveling through the marshes and the farmlands and even the southern parts of the Eyr forest, but that he was a city person at heart. He had experience with picking locks and burgling houses, with running cons and races.

There were other things Cougar learned about Jensen that were not so easily revealed to him. Jensen was a shapeshifter – what kind, and why _Jensen_ didn’t access his Other form, Cougar didn’t know.

(Jensen regularly dabbed the paste against Cougar’s forehead in a rune, which Cougar assumed was why he could still not access his Other form, and the only times Cougar’s hands were free was when he was allowed to relieve himself. No amount of surreptitious scrubbing or rubbing seemed to remove it. That, more than anything else, kept Cougar highly aware that he was a captive and prisoner.)

But Jensen had all the quirks of a shapeshifter yet never transformed, even on the few days when he halted early and went scavenging for food. He came back with roots and plants, mostly, and a few rabbits that Jensen had caught by spearing them with a sharpened stick he’d clumsily fashioned. Jensen would also tilt his head, as if trying to hear a sound on the breeze not normally heard with human ears. He didn’t know why the other man wouldn’t transform; certainly it couldn’t be what was keeping Cougar’s Other form from showing – not when Jensen had to reapply the paste on Cougar’s forehead (the only part of the day that Cougar actively fought against everything Jensen did, even though Jensen apologized again and again for it) and no one, not even Jensen, was reapplying paste to Jensen’s form.

There were other things Cougar noticed about Jensen. Jensen would wake up in the middle of the night, breathing hard and shaking. He had nightmares, and his back was heavily scarred from whips. His feet, while not all that calloused, were still calloused enough that he had made this entire journey on foot so far, steadfastly ignoring the cuts and gashes beyond trying to clean them out with water and keep them clean. It made Cougar wonder what had happened to Jensen.

Another puzzle was just how much Jensen was knowledgeable about the Court politics surrounding a lot of major decisions that had been made recently, such as granting trading rights to Duke Naveer and the boundary dispute between Duchess Aroline and Duke Vax. Jensen had no trouble referring to Dukes and Duchesses and Nobles and Avows by their first names – which was strange enough that it often took _Cougar_ a while to realize who exactly Jensen was talking about, sometimes. He had knowledge that no slave should ever have had access to. Hell, some of it Cougar could almost swear was exaggeration and outright lies, only he didn’t know enough of any of it to actually say. The bits he did recognize, he knew because of Clay’s big mouth, not because it was common knowledge around the Court.

And then of course who could forget the fact that Jensen seemed to _know_ Cougar’s team? He knew Cougar’s propensity for kicking, a fighting style that was largely unknown in this part of the continent. He knew Clay was a seawatcher, which had stunned Cougar silly for an entire hour, because seawatchers were not only rare but practically extinct. Clay’s pale skin should have had people guessing he was descended from the White Ones or pirates, not that he was one of the precursors to selkies.

And yet.

And yet Jensen, for all his knowledge, still had difficulty trapping animals. He had ended up wrapping his feet in leaves by midday, which would be torn and in shreds by the end of the day. He seemed unaware of how tight or short the tunic was and had, in fact, started moving closer and closer to Cougar with each night, balled up tight and shivering. Two nights ago, Cougar had finally rolled his eyes and grunted at Jensen that he might as well just curl up next to Cougar, because simply moving closer didn’t mean that heat would magically transfer from Cougar to Jensen (and yes, Cougar had offered for reasons not exactly pure, but it wasn’t as if Jensen had taken him up on it anyway, so no harm done).

Jensen laughed loud and long at his own jokes and stories, and some of Cougar’s dry remarks, but his happiness rarely reached his eyes, which were always calculating, always careful. Jensen didn’t seem to know the appropriate amount to feed Cougar – hunger was a constant companion now, especially since Jensen was having to supply the miniscule rations left with whatever he could hunt (which wasn’t a lot) – and definitely didn’t feed himself half as much as Cougar had thought shapeshifters needed in order to survive.

For all that Cougar had wanted to stick with Jensen and figure out what the hell the kid was trying to do, he was no closer to finding the answers than when he’d first woken up.

This night, they were closer to the warmer climes, perhaps a day or a day and a half from the towns that surrounded the outskirts of the Capitol – they’d crossed the Plains Road three days ago, which was actually really fast for walking, and led Cougar to suspect this was a very expensive horse Jensen had stolen because most horses didn’t have the stamina for such prolonged walking for such an extended length of time. Even with all the rests Jensen gave the horse to eat and to water it didn’t change the fact that the common breeds of horses would have needed at least a day of rest by now. Perhaps this horse was descended from the dwarven horse stock, or maybe even elven horse stock.

Jensen was huddled up close to Cougar, but Cougar had already figured out Jensen was a fairly heavy sleeper. He could come fully awake in seconds, but it took a nightmare (or Cougar accidentally kicking Jensen) for him to wake up. Cougar had had quite a few whispered conversations with his team via Pooch’s magic while Jensen breathed steadily and softly next to him. It helped that the conversations were never very long – mainly Pooch and Clay bitching at him for this time-consuming interest of his, and Cougar telling them to wait a bit longer.

The familiar soft blue light blazed to life practically in their campsite, making the horse whicker and shift a bit. Because his team had caught up with Jensen and himself (Cougar had been able to catch the sight of Roque prowling on the horizon line to the west some days), Pooch’s magical hound did not have to try and trace Cougar’s scent to find him; Pooch could send his hound right to the camp immediately. Cougar raised his head a little, waiting for the hound to trot over to his side, and to inform his group again that yes, he was sticking to this, and no, he didn’t need them to come in and untie him.

Jensen suddenly jerked upright, chest heaving, hands trembling. The magical hound leapt behind a nearby bush – mostly hidden, but it was hard to hide a light source in the darkness of the witching hour. Thankfully, Jensen didn’t seem to notice; instead, he clutched at his shoulders and breathed shakily in, trying to control himself and his shakes.

Cougar watched Jensen for a long moment. Jensen had nightmares before this, obviously, and Cougar had always seen the tail end of them – but generally the nightmares either stayed until the later part of the night, right before sunrise, or if they came earlier, they weren’t strong enough to wake Jensen _until_ just before sunrise. This was – not normal. Then again, Jensen had been getting wound tighter and tighter, as evidenced by his shoulders and the way his babble began to increase exponentially.

“Jensen,” he said quietly.

The kid jerked and whipped his head around to stare at Cougar a moment. Then he tried for a shaky smile. “Just – dreams,” he whispered.

Cougar inclined his head. “Never this bad, before.”

“No,” Jensen agreed softly, starting to move away from Cougar.

And, well, it wasn’t as if Cougar actually had hands to stop Jensen from leaving, but still he angled his head up and said, “Wait.”

Jensen paused and looked down at Cougar.

“Come. Come lie down here,” Cougar said.

Hesitantly, Jensen returned to Cougar’s side and gingerly sat down next to Cougar.

“I cannot make you talk about it—” Cougar began, and continued quickly as Jensen’s eyes went dark and his mouth opened, “—but you can lie close. Sometimes, closeness takes away the bad dreams.”

That gave Jensen pause. He considered Cougar, both tentative and skeptical. “Are you asking me to – cuddle?”

Cougar shrugged one shoulder. “If you do not want,” he said expressively, and waited.

Jensen licked his lips, and looked up at the sky. Sunrise was still a few hours off, but the weak moonlight and stars showed off enough of their surroundings that Cougar could see the dark shapes on the far horizon that were probably city walls – certainly, they could see the weak light in the distance. Cougar hoped that Jensen either didn’t turn around to see if the magical hound was still present or that Pooch had had enough presence of mind to recall the hound back to him; in the darkness, all light stood out to some degree or another.

“What if – what if I do want?” Jensen said, pulling Cougar’s attention back to him. “What if I wanted – want more? Than just – cuddling?”

Cougar’s immediate, visceral reaction was to heartily agree with that. His second, more cautionary reaction pointed out that it wouldn’t be very good – he doubted Jensen would untie him (he was trussed up, like normal, the blanket around his arms and upper body) so Cougar wouldn’t be able to really participate, and their supplies were so low he doubted Jensen had anything that could be used as a lubricant within the sack. Beyond that, Jensen just seemed very young, almost impossibly so. Cougar wasn’t _old_ , and Jensen did look to be the age of majority, but still, he would feel he was taking advantage of the man since he had remained with Jensen in part because of his lust.

After a few moments that seemed much longer than they were, Cougar shrugged. “I would not mind, but I do not think you offer because you want. I do not think it would be very comfortable.”

Slowly, Jensen nodded. “Well, I guess I understand that,” he murmured. “Still, I don’t know why you’d doubt _my_ willingness when you’re the one tied up.”

Cougar grinned lazily. “Oh, I don’t doubt my own willingness,” he purred, the hint of his Other in his throat.

It clearly had an effect on Jensen; he shifted awkwardly, mind successfully distracted from his earlier nightmare. “You realize that doesn't make any sense. Why would you _not_ suspect your willingness when you’re _my_ captive?”

Cougar chuckled, low and sultry. “It is not misplaced or mistaken affection. You have not treated my body well enough for me to fall into affection against my will.”

“I should probably be insulted,” Jensen muttered.

Cougar didn't say anything at all, and Jensen laughed ruefully. “Yeah, I guess you have a point, but I need to keep you tied up. No offense meant.”

At that, Cougar crinkled his brow and frowned. “No, I understand your need to tie a captive,” he said. “It is more the intensive riding and the lack of food, truthfully.”

Jensen frowned. “The riding bit was necessary, but I fed you more than I ever got.”

“That does not make me feel better,” Cougar replied. “Merely makes me worry about your strength and safety.”

Jensen squinted at Cougar. “I’m not sure what you mean, but if it makes you sure your... _affection_ is not misplaced, then I guess I'm all for it.”

“But nothing more than cuddling,” Cougar said firmly. “Not until you are clear about what you want and what you expect.”

Jensen paused, and slowly curled up around Cougar’s body, tucking freezing fingers and toes close in. “That doesn’t make sense,” he grumbled under his breath. “How could you figure you’re fine with being with me, but I’m somehow _not_ fine with being with you?”

“Simple,” Cougar whispered back, leaning his head against the top of Jensen’s. “I am fully grown, and while I am a captive, do not think for one second that I am your possession. You are not full grown, and you offer me sex because you are afraid – of what, I do not know.”

“’m not scared,” Jensen muttered, shivering hard. “And I’m full grown. You’re a lot different than I expected, you and your team.”

Cougar didn’t respond, simply kept himself as still as possible and let Jensen doze off against his chest. The young man was still shivering, trying to keep his limbs to himself even as he burrowed against Cougar’s arm and side, and Cougar felt inexplicable fondness for the innocence of that gesture. Would Jensen treat Cougar the same if he knew Cougar could have, at any time in the past journey, gotten free and taken Jensen captive?

They were near the end of their journey. Cougar would finally be able to make sense of Jensen’s contradictory and confusing words and behavior. And maybe Jensen wouldn’t be punished too heavily, and Cougar could figure out more about this person who knew the ins and outs of the capitol and the Court though Cougar could not for the life of him remember a pale-skinned shapeshifter anywhere while he was stationed at the capitol. In fact, there were very few who lived inland and populated the capitol that were pale-skinned at all – Clay was a pasty-white anomaly, and often little children stared at him. The Lord of this land had a few close contacts with the seafaring folk, and they were pale and often stared at as well, but little to no servants, and certainly no cityfolk. That Jensen never stood out while at Court was either a testament to his ability to blend or a result of eavesdropping from places Cougar had not noticed.

(Cougar wasn’t sure which one he preferred; that he didn’t notice someone watching him, or that he dismissed someone like Jensen without even realizing it.)

Cougar woke up, and Jensen was gone.

“What the hell happened?”

Cougar glared at Clay, rubbing his arms. He was completely untied for the first time, and he had started to walk in the direction he assumed Jensen had gone (towards the city), stretching legs, when his team came barreling over a ridge, hooves pounding against the grassy field. Or rather, Clay and Pooch had rode over the rolling hill, trailing Roque’s horse, and Roque had loped slightly behind. “He drugged me, and left me here – our camp was not here.”

“No, your camp is about ten miles west of here – we know because when the Pooch’s hound went looking for you, there was a note drawn in the grass, telling us our ‘kitty’ is in this direction,” Pooch huffed.

Roque shook his head and lifted his lips in a soundless snarl.

“I do not know what was done to put me so soundly asleep,” Cougar began, and then he paused. The Other seemed… not muffled. Awake. Aware.

Before he could think it through, he transformed with a thought, limbs stretching and twisting and ripping through clothes as his muscles bulked up and a tail lashed free from its confinement.

“Oh, good,” Clay snarked, voice cutting. “Now we have to get you clothes, too.”

“Calm down; it won’t be difficult to pick up the trail of one runaway slave, no matter what head start he has on us,” Pooch grumbled, gingerly patting Cougar’s shoulder. “I’m glad you have your Other back, but we kinda need to get this show on the road,” he told Cougar.

Cougar turned his head towards the capital.

“Do you know why he’s heading there? What’s going on?”

Cougar shook his head in the negative at Clay.

“Just perfect,” Clay growled, fists clenching and muscles bunching under his skin. For a moment, his eyes glowed blue, but this far from a body of water, his strength wasn’t enough to bother Cougar at all.

Roque, on the other hand…

“He probably took the horse into the city, since he was so close. Dressed as he is, you’d think he would stick out, right? But it’s entirely possible that he’s an assassin, sent to dispose of someone – maybe even the Lord himself. He certainly knew a lot more tricks than any runaway should have.”

Cougar wished he could dispute that, but the truth was he had no idea what Jensen’s business was in the city. Jensen knew the upper class by first names, wanted to get to the city before Cougar’s team could stop him, wanted to get to the city before a caravan headed by Wade…

Cougar glanced around at the horses his team had, looking for his own.

“If you’re looking for clothes, we didn’t exactly stop to grab your packs before we left,” Pooch sighed. “We grabbed your saddlebags, but whatever you had unpacked at the Keep is still there. We were kinda in a hurry to come get you.”

“ _And_ the General herself let me know that she was _most_ displeased that we weren’t following the northern patrol, especially with the raiding parties of White Ones coming down the hills,” Clay continued.

From long habit, the team ignored Clay’s griping; there wasn’t much they could do when Clay was in a mood, other than wait it out. Instead, Cougar stretched and rolled a bit, regaining a feel for his four-footed Other form, before padding over to his horse and twisting his body back into humanoid form.

His saddlebags were for the most part empty, but he had a pair of breeches, rough riding slippers, and a loose tunic rolled at the bottom of one of them. Emergency clothes, but they would do for now.

“So what _did_ you learn?” Clay demanded, rounding on Cougar. “Is your curiosity satisfied? Or are we completely in the dark about this threat?”

Cougar tightened the breeches and hunched a little to pull on the riding slippers. “Not satisfied, you know that. But whoever he is, he’s an oddity. He has the scars of a slave, claims to have been one. Slave-born, with a low enough price to buy out his contract.”

“Hah,” Pooch grunted, swinging up onto his gelding and nearly kicking Roque in the head when the wolf came too close to his feet. “I’ll believe that when the sun dips below the Twins.”

Cougar smiled mirthlessly. “He’s too young to be an independent operator. He’s obviously some Nobleman or –woman’s slave, perhaps trained in the art of spycraft. The upper classes love keeping an eye on each other. But he is also just as clearly working without explicit direction – his plan was ill-conceived and haphazard… he did not have enough resources or materials. Whatever he’s doing, he’s off his owner’s instructions and writing his own. Whether that’s good or bad…” Cougar shrugged his shoulders. “He wanted to head off the caravan, but we’ve been moving so fast I think he has something else planned ahead of time. I don’t know what is in that caravan, but perhaps we should look into it, understand what could put someone’s back up. Maybe it’s a ruse, or maybe he found out that the caravan is going to be bringing in some goods that will undermine another Noble’s business matters. Either way, we’ll know more about him through it.”

Pooch sighed and folded his arms, even as Clay growled under his breath and stormed off. Roque looked between the two of them before trotting after Clay, and Pooch and Cougar watched apathetically as Clay shouted and waved his arms in the distance, venting out the built-up anger before it pushed him into berserker.

“You want me to scry the caravan. The caravan that I have no personal connection to, no way to link with, and no reason to pry at?”

“Yes,” Cougar said simply.

Heaving a sigh, Pooch rolled his eyes and reached to his saddle to pull the built-in harness up and fasten it around his waist, preventing him from falling off while he worked his magic. “And I thought _Clay_ was the only idiot who got us in trouble because his brain is between his legs.”

Clay, who had been walking back to them with a nude, transformed Roque trailing behind him, snarled at Pooch.

His team, Cougar thought fondly. He wouldn’t trade them for the world.

By sunset, they had passed through the outlying towns that sprawled from the capitol’s walls and were in line to be let into the capitol itself. The wall guards were obviously bored and looking for ways to liven up their duty, often by picking on the citizens trying to get into the city or trying to leave. It was making Cougar more and more short of temper, and Roque was gaining that deadly stillness that meant he was riding the edge of attacking. Pooch was just barely keeping it together out of all of them (Clay had long-past gone entirely silent and furious). When they finally reached the front of the line, the guard looked them up and down and sneered.

“Stole those horses, did you? Bunch of renegades thinking to slip into the city and cause some problems?”

“Look, good sir,” Pooch said patiently, handing out a piece of parchment. “We’re a Specialist team under the General Aisha herself. We’re on the trail of someone who we’re certain entered the city today. A potential spy from the White Ones.”

The guard folded his powerful arms, the dark shadows practically swallowing up his skin and form. It was a tactic of intimidation, Cougar knew – Pooch and Roque used it often – and he felt his Other shift eagerly under his skin. His Other form was ready to show this guard real intimidation.

“That seems like a pretty fantastic story. What do you think, Roberts, you think I should let them in?”

His partner, a slim young man only a few shades lighter than him and therefore marginally easier to see in the fading light, snickered. “Sounds like a storyteller’s farce to me,” he sniggered.

Pooch bared his teeth and the tattoos curled over his arms, the muscles in his shoulders flexing. “You are speaking to Specialist Carlos Alvarez, Specialist William Roque, Specialist Linwood Porteous, and Head Specialist Franklin Clay, of the General’s team the Losers. We are second to none in our covert abilities and have been entrusted before with the task of guarding the Lord himself. And you _dare_ to delay us because you are rookie guards who got stuck with this shit detail because of your own incompetence?”

By the end of his speech, Pooch’s tattoos were glowing a deep midnight blue, little flecks of highlights over his skin that made him look more mystical than ever, and the entire audience (comprised of the people still in line, the guards, the outgoing line, and the team themselves) had fallen silent in shock and awe.

The guard swallowed and tugged the bell to signal for the gate to open.

“Thank you for your eventual cooperation,” Pooch bit out, and marched his horse into the city, the three of them trailing behind trying not to giggle like schoolchildren. When Pooch wanted to put people in their place, he _did_ so.

“Aw, stuff it,” Pooch grunted, causing Clay to break into peals of laughter and Cougar to snicker.

“Remind me never to piss you off!” Clay snorted, as Roque fought not to show his mirth on his face.

Pooch squared his shoulders. “Look, we have at the best a runaway slave running around the city that _we_ lost, and at worst a – an assassin or something. We have _no idea_ what that guy wants, and we’re burning daylight already.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Roque said, hilarity finally under control. “I say we head to the capital. Report in, see if we can find the guy’s trail.”

Clay nodded, gesturing at Cougar. “You and Roque track the guy via scent; Pooch can try to scry out that caravan, figure out what is so special about it. I will head to the General and report in, give our suspicions and a description of the guy to her,. She can have the common guards looking out for him – how hard could it be to find another light-skinned person in the city?”

Cougar didn’t speak up – he knew just from Jensen’s continuous chatter that the man was skilled at hiding in plain sight, but since he and Roque were going to be tracking the boy through scent, they’d eventually find him anyway.

“I’ll also tell her to keep an eye out for that caravan – I’m sure we got here ahead of it, considering the straight path we took and the amount of time it takes caravans to move along the roads – and that it might be just the games of the nobles, but that doesn’t mean it is totally harmless.” Clay reached out to Roque, who handed the reins of his horse over and dismounted. Cougar handed his reins to Pooch and slid off as well, hanging his hat on the saddle and then grabbing a small leather pack. “We’ll meet up by dawn if you haven’t found him by then.”

Roque glanced at Cougar and snorted. “We’ll find him. C’mon, Cougar.”

Cougar smiled at Pooch and trailed after Roque’s form.

In the narrow alley, Roque slid his pants off and folded them efficiently before turning to Cougar and growling, “Do you have any idea which noble owns this guy, or which noble this guy was supposed to spy on?”

Cougar continued removing his clothes, but he cast his mind back over the many, many conversations Jensen had held with himself. “No. He claimed, multiple times, to be working alone, but I have told you why I believe that is not the case. There is no way for a slave to be left behind without the slave’s master knowing about it; the fact that a team of slavers never showed up for him meant that he is on some errand. I know nobles use slaves as spies among their ranks, and this slave certainly was unskilled in any type of field-craft that could bring him food or supplies. So, a noble, and high up enough that this slave knew many intimate details about the Lord himself, as well as the higher ranking nobles and generals. He knew our team very well – he knew that Clay was a seawatcher, that I use a kicking style of fighting that is primarily used in the East and that I have used only rarely in public combat.”

“You think he’s the slave of a general. Someone who would regularly be in contact with the Lord, and the troops.”

Cougar hitched a shoulder and absently swatted a fly off his naked thigh. “It makes the most sense, explains the most irregularities in his chatter and what I saw.”

“Right.” Roque rolled his shoulders and said pointedly, “If we’re both transformed, we’re gonna attract a lot of attention. It might be better for you to walk around after me.”

Cougar narrowed his eyes.

“Also, if a werewolf comes sniffing around, rillans to ips your boy’s gonna rabbit away. He’ll need someone to catch him who has fingers, not claws.”

Lifting his upper lip at Roque – who chose _now_ , after Cougar had already stripped down, to mention this – Cougar reluctantly pulled back on his clothes and cast a disdainful look at Roque’s pile.

Roque let out a huff of air. “And if you leave my clothes in the gutter here to be picked up by some beggar I’m gonna leave honey in your sleeping roll for mice and ants to find.”

Cougar growled low in his throat as Roque shook his shoulders and then let the transformation slide over him, fur and muscles growing, jaw lengthening. Cougar grabbed the clothes and tied them in a messy bundle that would leave a hell of a lot of wrinkles and stretches in the material, and then folded his arms, looking at Roque expectantly.

Obligingly, Roque put his nose to the ground, huffed disgustedly, and began looking for traces of Jensen’s scent. For all that Cougar was annoyed he didn’t get to track Jensen himself, he didn’t envy the myriad amount of scents and filth Roque would have to sort through in order to pick up Jensen’s unique smell.

Roque trailed over the barracks, searching out hints of Jensen’s smell, and sometimes he would stop, follow a trail intently for a while, only to stop at a wall and growl to himself. Cougar ignored the soldiers who stared and muttered behind their hands, intent on finding the young man before he did something stupid and foolish. After a couple of hours, Roque sat back on his haunches and let out a frustrated growl, scaring the new recruits in the training grounds.

With a sigh, Cougar agreed. “Pointless. Let’s return to Clay – perhaps there will be better news with him.”

Roque snorted in disgust and padded away from the open ground towards the barracks, Cougar following at a slower pace. Once in the barracks, Cougar tossed Roque’s clothes on the floor and waited as Roque shifted back into human form.

“Think the damn scent just disappeared into the walls sometimes. Just – gone. Entirely,” Roque snarled under his breath, tugging at his clothing haphazardly, making them even more wrinkled. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say the damn kid could fly and walk through walls, but he can’t.”

Cougar paused.

Roque noticed and narrowed his eyes at Cougar. “What?” he asked.

“Perhaps he is not the slave of a general or military liaison,” Cougar said slowly. “Perhaps he is the slave of the Lord’s spymaster.”

“Duke Maxwell? The spymaster isn’t allowed slaves – slaves’ loyalty can be bought and sold, and slaves of a spymaster will know too much. If the Duke has a slave, not only is that highly illegal but it puts us in the unenviable position of having to prove that this kid belongs to the Duke.” Roque frowned, folding his arms. “You sure it can’t be anyone else?”

Roque was right – proving ownership of slaves only worked when the owner wanted to claim the slave. If Duke Maxwell thought his position would be in jeopardy if he admitted to owning Jensen, he just wouldn’t admit it. Finding slave papers and bills of sale was almost impossible if someone was trying to meet a deadline, given the amount of slaves bought and sold on a daily basis.

Also, if one was buying a slave illegally, it stood to reason that the papers proving the bill of sale would be difficult to find.

“It could be,” Cougar conceded. “I just do not know who else it would be that would work closely with the soldiers and military. Perhaps it is some other noble, a supplier or buyer, whom the military relies on. I cannot determine, and I do not know enough about politics to tell.” It would make the most sense, given what he knew about Jensen, and how much Jensen knew, but it would be very hard to prove in any concrete way.

With nothing much more to do, the two of them made their way over to their team’s quarters, only to not find Pooch or Clay there. A bit more searching revealed that the last two members were cooling their heels in the General’s office, and so they joined Clay and Pooch there.

“Thought you were close buddies with the Iron Witch,” Roque growled.

Cougar refrained from pointing out that the General was literally a door away from them, and her assistant, a young female with high pointed ears on which multiple gold points twinkled in the lamplight, could hear them. Roque openly hated the General, in part because Clay often shared the General’s bed and the Losers were regarded as the General’s pets – something Roque abhorred.

Clay ignored Roque’s parroting of General Aisha’s nickname and instead inclined his head across the office, at staves propped up against the wall. “A diplomatic party’s here. Western Airwalkers, if I’m not mistaken.”

Pooch was the only one out of the four of them to sit properly, so he didn’t have to jerk himself into position when the doors opened, just saluted with his closed fist against his heart and inclined his head. The rest of them had to sit upright in the proper company, and belatedly mirrored Pooch’s salute as the small party of Airwalkers, dressed in fluttering veils that barely covered the smooth, dark skin in all necessary places, picked up their staves and exited the room.

“Clay!”

The shout had Clay up on his feet in an instant, and Roque, Pooch, and Cougar were quick to follow. The assistant glowered at them as they walked past the small desk and into the larger office.

General Aisha was a slight, almost petite figure. She certainly was tinier than everyone else in her office, even if Cougar was generous and included the outside assistant. Built along the lines of a hummingbird, her long ponytail had white flowers woven in the strands. Every so often, one of the flowers would spark and crackle with suppressed electricity. Dressed in a plain jerkin and sensible trousers, she stood up and braced her fists on the desk.

“You abandoned your post. You didn’t inform me of this – I had to find it out from our spymaster, and you _know_ how I hate the Duke holding things over my head – and did not inform the Duchess of this, which meant you are twice in the wrong. Then you do not even have the decency to present yourselves to me immediately; instead, you settle in, drink some wine, eat some food, while two of your party go traipsing across all the barracks, so I have to find out from a _messenger_ that you have entered the city.”

“We have reason to believe there’s a problem here in the city,” Clay tried to cut in.

All the flowers began to glow and spark as she snarled, “There’s _always_ problems in the city! You had clear lines to follow when you’re being punished; I’m already accused of favoritism, and don’t think your dick’s going to sweet-talk you out of the consequences that are about to fall on your necks!”

There was a muffled explosion, and then the sounds of screams filtered in through the walls. The five of them stared at each other before turning and running out, the general snapping orders at her assistant.

Stepping outside the office, in the hallway, it looked like nothing had been touched. Moving out of the hallway and into the courtyard that butted up against the barracks and palace, though…

The barracks were a smoking hole in the ground.

“That,” General Aisha said grimly, “is a war mage’s work.”

“Our own?” Pooch asked, confused, but the general was already running towards the palace.

“Alright, sit-rep,” Clay said immediately, turning to them. “Currently, the Lord and almost every single diplomatic envoy is in the palace. It’s untouched, so this is probably some form of a military coup. The soldiers have been – removed. We were supposed to be there, checking in, not going straight to the general’s office, so we’re lucky. Let’s see if we can stay that way and figure out what the hell is going on here.”

Roque eyed the palace and then Clay. “Weapons or claws?”

“Weapons, for the most part. We might need your claws later on, but for right now we need to get in there and assess the situation. Cougar, up high. Pooch, I need you to round up what soldiers you can find who weren’t involved in the blast. Bring them to the palace but not inside – send your hound in to me, and get an idea of what’s necessary.”

Pooch jerked his head in affirmative and immediately jogged off, arrowing away. Roque and Clay made their way to the palace, and Cougar immediately went towards a side entrance.

The palace was very old; it started off as a simple wood structure, built from thick oak beams that crisscrossed to hold up the weight of the upper floors. Not that the structure got very high, not as a wood structure as sprawling as a palace. But as time went by, and stone was added, and the palace grew, it grew around the wooden structure. That meant that on the lower floors, particularly where the audience chambers were, and the throne room, there was a rafter system that would allow him to look down at the proceedings. Of course, that supposed he could get up into the rafters without being seen – but he was confident in his ability to do so.

There were no guards at the doorways, which was immediately suspicious. Whatever was going on, Cougar instantly realized, some of the guards had been in on it.

He had no idea what was going on, what the endgame was. They were all taken entirely by surprise, and they were still in the dark, groping for some kind of clue. As it was, he crept around the corner silently. He didn’t have any weapons, not beyond the couple of knives he had secreted about his person, but he hoped he could find something to use later on as he made his way through the castle. As it was, he could hear shouts and a murmur of noise down towards the open court, where almost all functions and formal gatherings were held. Abstractly, he knew that the Lord had been planning to hold a festivity for some event or the other, some famous anniversary that Cougar didn’t much care one way or the other about. He had already seen that envoy in the general’s office literally a few minutes (okay, more than a few, but not much) ago, so there were definitely dignitaries around.

A scratch of leather against the wall, and Cougar dropped into the shadows, pulling a knife out of his boot and holding it tight. Two guards walked past, swords out but held casually in their hands.

Cougar frowned at the poor conduct. If you were going to do something nefarious, he felt, you should at least be competent about it. Guards should be on _guard_ , after all.

It made things easier, he supposed; once they walked past, he tailed them deeper into the palace, silent on soft-soled boots meant more for riding than anything. They walked past the large doorway that led to the Court, and where the most noise was coming from. Unnoticed, he slipped into the wide room, hoping that the guards he’d shadowed were typical of the rest of the security.

It didn’t seem like anyone had noticed him, and he was grateful for that. There were a lot of people milling around, dressed very well-to-do. He’d been here before, of course – the Losers were, like most Specialist teams, used often to showcase the military might of the Lord and so he knew that in the back there were enough shadows to allow him to quietly slip up into the rafters without drawing any attention.

When he got up and had himself balanced, he turned around and realized there was another human figure up there, crouched behind him.

In moments, he had his knife to the person’s throat, bearing down to pin the person against the beam.

The faint torchlight revealed Jensen’s young features.

The surprise must have been clear because Jensen gave him a lopsided smile. “Surprise?” he whispered.

“What are you doing up here?!” Cougar demanded in a hiss. “What’s going on?”

Jensen swallowed, scratching his throat against the sharp blade of Cougar’s knife. “Can we put the knife away?” he asked. “Only, if you kill me, I’ll drop this, and then everyone will know to look here.”

Cougar shot a glance to the side to see that Jensen was holding out his own knife, only above the hard cobblestone below, ready to make an awful racket. “Why not against my own throat, or body?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“I’m not so stupid as to think I could actually damage _you_ before you damaged _me_ ,” Jensen murmured, eyes crinkling. “So this is the better option, really.”

“What are you doing here?” Cougar demanded again, more than a little annoyed that he had spent the better part of his afternoon looking for this one person – and that he was definitely noticing Jensen was in _much_ better clothing than the last time they were in close proximity.

Jensen shrugged a little. “I was trying to get to the city before the caravan, you know that. Only I thought I was trying to get ahead of a caravan that was transporting weapons, not a caravan made up of mercenaries. So I misjudged how much time it would take them to get here. They were already in place by the time I got into the city. It didn’t help that I had to hide from you and ugly. I wanted to warn the Lord – it’s just… hard to be taken seriously.”

Cougar raised an eyebrow. “Really?” he said, voice dry.

A flush darkening his cheeks, Jensen finally showed signs of losing his cool. “Look, man, I could have just let you take the fall for my escape, but I didn’t. I tried to serve my Lord and I still came too late. I just want to try and make this right somehow.”

“What can you,” Cougar said deliberately, letting his voice show his skepticism and, yes, some contempt, “a slave, do to fix any of this?”

Jensen’s eyes went shuttered.

Cougar immediately felt bad, but he really had to figure out what this runaway was doing up here, in the rafters, and get a grip on the situation as quickly as possible.

“Look – I think I know Max’s plans, goals, and if I’m right, I know how to make sure that it doesn’t work out. Max’s second-hand man, Wade, he’ll need to be taken out and then whatever hostages Max has, he needs to be removed from. He’ll have some war mages around somewhere—”

“Who is Max?” Cougar interrupted.

Jensen sighed, glancing down at the mass of people below. “Look, okay, Duke Maxwell, alright? Duke Maxwell, the spymaster, has been having me run communications to and from the White Ones. This time, he told me to come back with a caravan, but that caravan had a lot of weapons and so I opened the communications and it was pretty suspicious looking so I tried to make a run for it but I wasn’t exactly well-dressed to make it from the border, which is when you found me, and the rest you know. Knowing Max, he hired a few mages, but he hates pretty much everyone who lives here on the Kaans. He comes from the west, you know, up in the Corisac Mountains across the sea, and was exiled here about fifteen years ago.”

Cougar stared at him, and he could hear noise and confusion down below him, but he wasn’t sure whether to trust this young man or not.

Well. Cougar had already done one pretty stupid thing by letting Jensen carry him along this far. What was wrong with going the rest of the way with him?

“So what’s the plan of action?” he whispered, hunkering down on top of Jensen.

“I—” Jensen began, at the same time that an ethereal hound materialized by Cougar’s elbow, floating in midair. Before Jensen could yelp and flail, Cougar shoved a hand over the kid’s mouth and pinned his body to the rafter with his knees.

The hound’s mouth opened, and Pooch said, “There aren’t many guards I could find, and I even went down to the brothels and winehouses. Tell me some good news, Cougs, so I can get Clay and Roque started up.”

Cougar looked pointedly at Jensen.

Licking his lips nervously, Jensen spoke up. “Um, well, overall I’m sure Max – uh, Duke Maxwell – took out most of the guards with a war mage, and the ones left, well… they might be in his employ. His right-hand man is Wade, a merchant who is a null; no magic works on him, and he prevents others around him in a certain radius from utilizing their own magics, even passive magics like better sight or smell. Duke Maxwell most likely blew up the barracks and in the confusion took the Lady or the Lord’s children hostage. He’s probably down there, actually, but until we find out where the hostages are and get them away safe we can’t go after him. But we still have to go after him quickly, because he’s most likely getting a ritual ready to have everyone here sign some kind of contract that’s binding, giving their loyalty to him.”

There wasn’t any sound at all, and then the hound said in Pooch’s resigned voice, “You found our runaway, I presume.”

“I trust him,” Cougar said quietly. “There is no reason for him to lie to us, not now. Not about this.”

“Maybe he wants us to get him close to the Lord so he can assassinate him. Maybe _he_ blew up the guard barracks.”

“And is holding every diplomatic envoy in the main ballroom? And has bribed some of the guards? For who?” Cougar paused, and then shook his head. “It does not matter. I will keep an eye on him, to protect our Lord and our land.”

The hound didn’t move, but Pooch snorted and Cougar could almost see Pooch roll his eyes. “Yeah, because you’re super objective. Alright – fine. I’ll tell Roque and Clay to make a diversion, take out as many of the guards in the palace as they can find. You’ve got fifteen marks to get a better grasp of the situation on the ground and find out what hostages were taken; thirty marks before we all come in to stop the ritual.”

Since rituals normally took an hour, and they’d already wasted precious minutes in explanation and planning, Cougar could understand the ridiculously short time to locate their objectives but they were highly unrealistic. Who could possibly find hostages in this warren of a palace within thirty marks? Let alone hostages that were unknown.

“Let me up, Cougar, and we’ll go looking!” Jensen said eagerly. “I bet I can identify everyone down there, and see who’s missing.”

With a sigh, Cougar backed off of Jensen and watched the young man jump up into a crab-like crouch and scuttle away across the rafters.

Rolling his eyes, Cougar followed the young man and hoped he wouldn’t regret this.

Cougar had to give Jensen an apology, later – Jensen had been very light on his feet, practically dancing across the rafters. Cougar was pretty sure Jensen had traveled these rafters very, very often. Not only that, but Jensen was muttering under his breath, eyes darting from one place to another, before he rocked back on his heels. “The children, the Lord’s children – they’re missing. Not only that, but there’s only the heads of states here; there are missing people from each envoy. I don’t think they had time to remove the hostages from the castle yet, but if they’re going to, they’re either going to put them in a cart and take them out of the city that way – which is possible, but there’s a lot of potential for that to go wrong, really – or they’re going to ensconce the hostages somewhere in the palace and keep them locked up somewhere. We’ll need to have someone watching for a cart pulling up, but it’s more likely that Max will keep his key hostages close to him, not far. We’ll need to plan out which areas of the castle are easiest to keep prisoners in. Besides the dungeons; that’s too obvious, and Max _hates_ being obvious.”

Cougar, crouched on the beam next to him, nodded quietly and tapped a bead hanging from his necklace. After a couple of minutes, the hound reformed by them again, and opened its mouth. “You guys got anything? Roque’s itching to go.”

“Hostages are probably holed up in the castle; Jensen and I are going to go search for them, while the Duke is here preparing the ritual. Wade is here, which means Duke Maxwell has unknowns with the hostages. Keep an eye on any exits that allow a cart to take away bodies, in case Duke Maxwell decides to remove the hostages from the premises,” Cougar said under his breath.

The hound bobbed its head once and then disappeared.

Turning to Jensen, Cougar tilted his head. “Where to? You know this castle better than I do.”

Jensen gnawed on his lip a minute and then slowly nodded. “Okay. I can see that. Let me think a moment.”

In the end, Jensen decided that they were going to look in the Lord’s wing, mostly because “it would just be Max’s brand of dickishness to do something like that” and the fact that, of all the places in the castle, it was the most easily defensible.

“And it’s probably heavily guarded,” Jensen whispered as he opened a trapdoor in the roof of the Court Cougar had had no idea even existed. “After all, the guards wandering around the castle are all dicks, which means he saved his heavy-hitters for the hostages. We just somehow need to free all the hostages and get them down to the Court before the ritual is complete and he starts forcing everyone to sign the contract.” Easily hefting himself up into the small space, he crawled almost noiselessly away. Cougar followed, feeling slightly stupid for not expecting the slave of the spymaster to know secret passageways and shortcuts throughout the palace.

It didn’t take them long to get to the wing. Getting in, however, would prove to be a problem.

After staring at the doors that led into the hallway that would then lead to the Lord’s quarters, Jensen hummed under his breath. “If they can contact Max the way you can contact your teammate, it won’t go well for us. We need to somehow stop any way they could communicate, and then take out the war mages – there, and there – without alerting anyone who could possibly be inside with the hostages.” Jensen nodded decisively and turned to Cougar.

Cougar stared at him. “Is that all?” he asked dryly.

“Look, you’re the one on a Specialist team, aren’t you?” Jensen demanded in a hushed tone.

With a sigh, Cougar rubbed the bead again and murmured to Pooch’s hound a bit before leaning back on his heels. “Will they recognize you?” he asked.

Jensen glanced around the corner again and wiggled his hand a bit. “W _eeee_ ll… I don’t think so. I was just a slave in the background, you know. So maybe? Maybe not?”

“Could you draw one of the mages away? After finding me a crossbow or longbow,” Cougar added.

“You don’t ask for much,” Jensen grumbled. “I’m practically handing you Max on a plate…” Mumbling under his breath, he ghosted down the hallway. When he was fully out of sight, Cougar breathed out just a bit harder than normal.

Cougars were silent killers, and if he was going to do this silently, he had to do it fast.

“Cougar! Cougar where—”

Cougar whirled around, almost leaping upon the intruder before his nostrils flared and he recognized the scent that had been near and around him for days. Checking his motion, he settled back on his feet and met Jensen’s shocked gaze with a blank face. Inside, he felt guilty – he had intended to be transformed back and the bodies neatened up, at least, before Jensen had come back.

“Well.” Jensen blinked, and looked around the hallway. “How—?”

He took a step forward and entered the bubble of silence Cougar had created with his Other magic in order to kill the outside guards without alerting anyone inside. Immediately, his jaw dropped and he looked around in awe.

Then he took a step backwards, exiting the bubble.

Then stepped in again.

When he went to do it a third time, Cougar huffed impatiently. Not that Jensen could hear it, but the motion caught Jensen’s eye and he looked contrite.

Gods, but he looked so young like that.

“Sorry,” he mouthed – no sound, not even heartbeats or breathing, could be heard inside the bubble – and then he came over and those awestruck eyes turned on Cougar. Tentatively, Jensen reached up and brushed fingers against Cougar’s cheekbones.

Cougar wasn’t fully in his other form; he was in that half-form that some Others learned and others didn’t. Not all Others could hold a half-human, half-animal form that could actually fight and wasn’t misshapen and deformed, unable to function. Fur dusted pretty much all of his skin, and his eyes and jaw were hinting at the cougar lying beneath his human form. His hands were clawed, feet stretched out, and overall he wasn’t by any means… something to be touched with reverence.

The way Jensen was doing now.

Before Cougar could lose any more of his senses because of this young man, he jerked his head to the door and dismissed the Other magic with a thought.

“That’s _seriously_ awesome,” Jensen whispered, eyes bright. “You’ve got to show me that again sometime.”

“Focus,” Cougar said mildly. “What will we most likely encounter behind the doors?”

Jensen shook his head and narrowed his eyes at the door. “Focus, right. Okay. Um, he had two mages out here and a handful of guards; there’s most likely a lot more guards inside, at least two or three units, and at least two more mages. Perhaps more. But it’s unlikely that there would be more than that – you can’t really plan a coup, after all, if you have too many people in on the secret.” Jensen paused, and then shrugged sheepishly. “I’m not going to be much help. Shouldn’t you have the rest of your team with you?”

“Roque and Clay are on their way,” Cougar said dismissively. “We have very little time, however, so we will engage now. _I_ will distract the guards. You will take _every_ hostage out of the room and down to the main Court, as fast as possible. There are enough magic users in the room that they can overpower Duke Maxwell and his man, and any other guards there might be, so long as those magic users know their loved ones are safe.”

There was a reason Cougar was on a specialist team, after all, and he would be able to hold his own until Roque came. Clay would break off to go make sure Jensen hadn’t run into any trouble with the hostages (and that Jensen hadn’t kept the hostages _as_ hostages, seeing as how Max was Jensen’s owner), but Roque was a one-man demolition crew.

He could handle whatever Cougar left over.

(Not that Cougar intended to leave much for Roque.)

It was anti-climactic. It really was, what with the fact that the Duke apparently had really thought he’d take out everyone with the attack on the soldier barracks and therefore hadn’t had a back-up plan. It was clear the Duke had contempt for all of them, considering such bad planning on his part.

Well. Not really; it had been luck that had kept their team out of the barracks. Procedure dictated that all military personnel either stayed at their posts (the bribed guards, or mercenaries, or both, had killed any soldier at their post) or in the barracks. In all truth, they should have been in those barracks. It was the fact that Clay was in fact close to the general that they were in her office, and only that. It shouldn’t even have been all of them – just Clay, while Pooch, Roque, and Cougar cooled their heels in the barracks.

The Lord High Stark was extremely appreciative and after apologizing to the visiting envoys, he took the team aside and personally congratulated them.

“You have saved my children’s lives and took down a traitor within my own house, a friend I had trusted with my life and the well-being of my kingdom,” the Lord said gravely. “Any favor you ask of me, within my power, ask it and I shall fulfill my debt to you.”

Clay made noises about being honored, but the one thing Cougar had to ask – probably improperly, but the Losers had never acted with propriety before, so why stop now? – was what had happened to Jensen in all the confusion.

The Lord frowned slightly.

“Jensen – the slave, that helped. That put together the attack, and created the strategy that succeeded in freeing the hostages?” Cougar asked, stepping forward and dropping his head respectfully.

With a sigh, the Lord rubbed his face. “The slave was illegal in the first place. Duke Maxwell used the slave often as a spy on other nobles and merchants, gathered information by sending the slave out to steal documents, items, and even money. The slave knows too much, and this was wrong to happen in this palace without anyone noticing.”

“Begging your pardon, m’Lord,” Pooch said quietly. “It sounds as if Jensen is in trouble.”

The room they were in was one of the smaller antechambers, meant for private audiences with the Lord, and as such it had a large, softly padded chair for the Lord. Instead of answering Pooch right away, the Lord walked over to the chair and sat down, rubbing a little at the grey on his temple. “Legally, a slave bound to a traitorous master is supposed to be put down. Legally, with all the crimes the slave has confessed to, even if it were free, the slave would be executed.”

“Permission to interject?” Clay asked, his voice grave, even as Cougar’s heart seized. He actually took a step forward until Roque reached out and gripped his shoulder.

The Lord looked away from Pooch to Clay. “Given,” he said quietly.

“My Lord High Stark, this slave has helped me and my men every step of the way. He knew exactly what Duke Maxwell’s thought process would be. His information was invaluable.”

“The slave is a _slave_ ,” the Lord cut in, voice hard. “Its loyalty is for _sale_. The secrets it knows jeopardizes this entire empire. And, ignoring all that, its master committed treason. The oldest law in our land demands that a treasonous master means death for the master and all the slaves below that did not report that treason immediately.”

Cougar turned to Clay, aware his eyes were wide, imploring, but unable to help himself.

“Could a punishment be substituted, my Lord High Stark?” Clay asked cautiously.

The Lord stared hard at Clay, then swept ice-blue eyes over the team. “What are you suggesting?” he said. “Speak plainly, without fear of repercussions this one time.”

Clay glanced back at Roque, then Cougar and Pooch, before turning back to the Lord. “Assign the slave to us. A body servant, who will go with us when we’re sent out, who’ll be our responsibility. We’ll keep him in line, and we’ll be able to use his skills to keep us well-informed in the field.”

For what seemed like a few minutes, but was probably only a few seconds, the Lord drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair. “This is not an answer to the charge that he broke the law by not reporting his master for treason.”

“Would anyone listen to the word of a slave, especially when the Duke was not allowed to have a slave?” Cougar said roughly, before he could think about what he was doing. “Would anyone have heeded the warnings? Or would Duke Maxwell been given a slap on the wrist for having an illegal slave, the slave would have been executed, and no one at all would have been around to aid us today during the Duke’s attempted coup?”

The Lord held Cougar’s gaze for an uncomfortable amount of time, before the Lord let out a soft sigh. “Very well. You may take the slave with you. You will not be able to be out in the fields much, anymore. I will need trainers for specialists, now. The loss of so many men at one time… it is a grave wound, one from which it will take some years to recover. You will be under my constant command. I will be watching my general’s interactions with you, and your team management. This is not and will not be a reward.”

“I understand,” Clay said respectfully.

For another long moment, the Lord said nothing, just stared at them a long moment, but then he sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I am not sure I should send you back out those doors. Not with the elven envoy out there. They did not notice you, Frank, but I wouldn’t bet on them remaining unobservant a second time.”

“Thank you, Antov,” Clay said sheepishly.

Jensen looked up from the corner of the cell when Cougar opened the door. “So?” he said, voice almost nonexistent. “When am I to be executed?”

Cougar’s mouth quirked slightly. “Come with me. You’re the Losers’, now.”

Jensen’s eyes lit up.

It was a thankless job, really, and Cougar was intimately reminded about how much he absolutely hated teaching others what came to him naturally. It left him frustrated and angry, and more often than not he prowled the city in his Other form at night. It meant that for the first two months, he was pretty much a nonentity within the small office wing General Aisha had shoved them in to act as living quarters.

This night, he was back earlier than normal – normal being in the dead of the night, normally in the middle of the third watch, and he was currently coming in just at the end of the first watch – when he heard voices in a low murmur.

“—not you, man. Cougar does like you.”

“I doubt it.”

That second, glum voice was Jensen, and Cougar debated for all of half a second before moving closer to the door that had the general ‘lobby’ area of the office wing, which was where the team stayed when they weren’t sleeping in the tiny closets called offices that had been repurposed into bedrooms. He could just make out the timber of Pooch’s voice, and the bright shock of fair hair that marked Jensen.

“He’s just really busy, man. Him and Roque are really the heavy hitters, the weapons experts, you know? He’s exhausted from a long day of teaching, that’s all.”

“It’s because I kept him tied up on that horse,” Jensen sighed. “I don’t think I’ve seen him more than like five marks since he got me out of that cell.”

Pooch leaned into Cougar’s line of sight to pat Jensen’s shoulder. “Look, kid, I can’t prove to you that Cougar likes you, so you have to take my word that he practically interrupted Lord Stark himself on your behalf.”

Cougar felt the back of his neck prickle, and turned to see Roque standing behind him, arms folded and gaze steady – and slightly annoyed. After a few seconds, Cougar tilted his head in the direction of the courtyard outside. Roque nodded gravely, and the two of them exited the hall to the outdoors.

“You gotta speak to the kid,” Roque grunted, leaning against the trunk of a tree and looking up at the dim stars. “Pooch can only do so much, and you know Jolene uses up a lot of Pooch’s free time anyway. Clay’s already running crazy between all his duties as the general’s deputy. You and I are really the only ones who can consistently be here, and I ain’t the best one to coddle your boy.”

“He’s not my boy,” Cougar said immediately.

“He might as well be,” Roque countered. “You’re the one that got curious about him, you’re the one that made us care about his mystery, enough that we ignored protocol when we got in the city and spent our time instead at somewhere other than our post – which saved our lives. This is something you need to do if only to let the kid know to stop moping and to start living. He’s got—”

“A crush on me,” Cougar finished, sighing. “I know. I saw… maybe some of it, when he was taking me through the wilderness.”

Roque grunted in surprise and looked at Cougar. “If you know, why don’t you do something about it?” he demanded. “The kid’s pining. He wouldn’t say no.”

“He can’t say no,” Cougar corrected, and when Roque’s eyes softened imperceptibly Cougar’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “And I can’t free him, not when that would mean risking the Lord calling for his execution. He knows too much, and is too observant for his own good. He can never be free, and does not understand what attraction or a relationship is. He is a _child_ , Roque. He’s barely of age to join the Lord’s army.”

“That’s hardly a child, Cougar,” Roque sighed, but he looked resigned. “In any case, then you need to explain that to him. Because right now? He thinks he did something wrong.” After a few quiet moments, Roque let out a small chuckle. “Besides, don’t you want to find out more about him, and what the hell he is? Even I can smell the Other magic in him, even if I can’t tell why in the hell I’m smelling it.”

Cougar rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll… think of something.”

“Soon,” Roque ordered.

“Soon,” Cougar echoed, and made his way back into the wing and slipped past the lobby into the small room he’d claimed as his own.

The next morning, he saw Jensen kneeling in front of the hearth, stirring a pot of porridge. “Jensen,” he said.

Jensen jerked upright and practically brained himself on the mantelpiece. “Yes! Yes, Cougar, what’s up? You need me?”

Cougar jerked his chin at the cloak by the door. “You’re with me buying supplies today,” he said. “Let’s give Pooch some alone time with Jolene.”

Jensen glanced back towards Pooch’s room, and then moved swiftly to the cloak. “If I never have to hear Pooch and Jolene have sex again, it’ll be too soon,” he muttered.

Chuckling under his breath, Cougar pulled out the draft horse and hitched it to the wagon. Easily, Cougar leapt up into the driver’s seat and then patted the space next to him. “Let’s go, Jensen. Time to teach you how to requisition and handle this part of our lives.”

Tripping over his feet in his eagerness, Jensen scrambled up and practically bounced up and down on the seat. “Amazing,” he said excitedly. “You know, I’ve never actually had to buy supplies before, and I’ve _never_ driven a cart before. I didn’t expect to ever learn. What I’ve done in my time was more single-style, yeah? Take, for example…”

Jensen babbled away, and the familiar cadence and outpouring of words made Cougar relax, oddly enough. He listened with half an ear as Jensen talked about how scavenging for food was something he’d learned from his sister and took him a while to figure out how to tell plants from one another. Cougar, meanwhile, was trying to find a way to bring up the fact that, for all that the Losers had taken Jensen as their general body servant and slave, they didn’t know anything about Jensen. They didn’t understand what he wanted, how he’d gotten mixed up with the Duke, or even how he had ended up close to the northern border of the land, so far from the capital.

“Cougar?”

Cougar turned to look at Jensen.

“You okay?” Jensen said tentatively.

With a short nod, Cougar pulled on the reins and brought the horse to a stop, the cart creaking. Jensen looked around for a long moment and for a moment, a calculating look passing through his eyes before he got out of the cart and folded his arms.

Cougar hopped down from the driver’s seat and moved to the back of the cart where Jensen was leaning. “I have some things to say to you,” he began, trying to start off neutrally.

“Is my probation period over? You going to kill me now?”

Cougar frowned. “I did my best to keep you from being killed. Why would I kill you _now_?”

Jensen hitched a shoulder almost casually. “We’re outside the immediate palace grounds? The requisitions and supplies office is definitely not here? We’re on the edge of the city, just inside the city walls but nowhere near a respectable area of the city? You’ve been avoiding me for the past two months?”

“All true,” Cougar conceded with a sigh. “But in truth it is for a different reason.”

Jensen shifted nervously, then turned away from Cougar to pace in the small field Cougar had taken Jensen for privacy. Cougar watched the young man move back and forth restlessly before starting to take off his shirt.

“Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?!” Jensen yelped.

Cougar paused and tilted his head at Jensen. “You’re restless. You’ve been restless for a month now, at least. The longer you remain within your human form the more upset and nervous you’ll get. It’s important that at least once a month you let your Other side out.”

“You – what? No, I mean – look, I haven’t been more or less restless than normal, and I _never_ transform,” Jensen said, startled out of his pacing. “No, what? What is this? You take me out here for _that_?”

Cougar was reeling from the idea that Jensen had _never_ transformed. “You – never? Not once?”

Jensen hitched a shoulder awkwardly, defensive and nervous. “No. Well, maybe when I was small?”

Cougar had his hands on his hips because he had been getting ready to strip down and transform with Jensen. Now, he simply stood there, trying to process the fact that an Other could not remember their own form. “Do – what is your other form?” he asked hoarsely.

Jensen let out a long sigh. “Okay. Fine. I don’t know why I’m out here, I don’t know what you want from me, but just – I’ve been a slave since birth, okay? Max has always been my owner. In his household, he hated everyone who wasn’t ‘pure’ like himself. Over where he used to live, in the West, magic is very rare and pretty much treated with outright hostility. Sometimes they were executed – most just lived on the outskirts of society. Because here it wasn’t the same, Max locked up any magic he saw.”

“Locked… up?” Cougar asked. The very idea was abhorrent – such runes and the like weren’t unheard of (obviously, considering Cougar’s brief stint as prisoner) but to permanently lock up someone’s magic, an intrinsic part of their nature?

Jensen hopped up onto the back of the cart and kicked his feet a little. “Yeah. I’ve got—” He paused, then undid the laces of his tunic to let it slide off his shoulders. His back, whip-scarred and too-thin, came into view, and he tapped the base of his skull where there was a black mark that Cougar had initially discounted as a mole. “A rune. The same rune I put on you, except mine’s – mine’s more permanent. I don’t know how to get rid of it and – and yeah, okay, there’s itching under my skin, like, _all the time_ , but I get it. I handle it. Is that the only reason I’m out here? Because that’s – that’s not going to happen. Are we – were we going to actually get supplies? With the cart and everything? Or was that a ruse to lure me out here to where you could kill me and bury the body and no one would know?”

Cougar walked over to Jensen and sat down next to him, shoulders brushing. “No, Jensen. I could not kill you.” He paused, and then said self-deprecatingly, “I would run away with you before killing you.”

Next to him, Jensen wiggled a little, and Cougar turned to raise an eyebrow at the young man.

“You _like_ me!” Jensen crowed, a huge grin on his face.

Confused, Cougar leaned back a little and tilted his head in question.

“I mean, I know what Pooch said, but man, I thought maybe I made you mad or something!” Jensen continued, eagerly. “Pooch says a lot of stuff to make people feel better, I figured out. He tells Roque all the time that the recruits are gonna get smarter and he’s been saying that since, like, day four. He also tells Clay that the paperwork will disappear one day, and we _all know_ that’s not gonna happen—”

Cougar hopped down and patted Jensen’s shoulder. “Let’s go get those supplies. I’ll show you how to handle the requisitions office.”

“We have to remove the rune on Jensen.”

Clay looked up, frazzled and annoyed. “What in Akriz’s nine realms are you talking about now, Cougar?”

“Jensen is an Other who has never transformed because a rune is burned and inked into his skin,” Cougar said. “He could be an asset to this team.”

“He’s a _slave_ , Cougar!” Clay growled.

“He can be _more_!” Cougar snarled back. “Not even can – he _is_ more! You may have forgotten, but _I_ remember that it was him and him alone that allowed us to stop the Duke’s plans. That it was his skills that had gathered power and knowledge for the Duke. Conveniently forgetting that he’s just as intelligent, capable, and powerful as any one of us doesn’t help and in fact will slow _all_ of us down. He’s here for the rest of his life. You want to end up out in the field again? With just a _slave_ , we’ll be slow, but with a trained operative—”

“Dammit, Cougar, I’m doing my best, okay? You do whatever the hell you want with your boy. I don’t have the coin to spend on him because it’s going to trying to recreate an entire city _and_ royal guard from the ground up within the shortest amount of time possible!” Clay said, eyes turning a blue-green and hair lightening.

Cougar stared Clay down for a moment before saying, “I’m training him.”

“Do whatever the hell you want, Cougar, but remember what fire you’re playing with, and what the Lord can _easily_ do if you cross that line!” Clay thundered.

Turning on his heel, Cougar exited the room and nearly ran straight into Roque’s chest. Hackles up, he bared his teeth, only to realize Roque was looking at him speculatively.

“What?” he challenged.

“You want your boy trained up, you’re gonna be too soft on him. Plus, you’re gonna have to find a rune-breaker.” Roque grinned, baring canines that looked too sharp in his human face. “I’ll toughen him up. He may have to stay a slave, but we don’t have to treat him as one.”

Stunned, Cougar watched Roque walk away.

“Oh—” Roque added, poking his head back around the corner. “You might want to remember that he’s intelligent and capable and what-the-hell ever you shouted at Clay when you deal with him, yourself.”

Roque’s words haunted Cougar as he spent his mornings trying to train men into soldiers, afternoons trying to find a skilled rune-breaker that could deal with a rune that had been in place for a lifetime, and nights trying to get his head sorted out. He orbited around Jensen, and never before had anyone gotten so thoroughly under Cougar’s skin as Jensen had.

And yet.

And yet, how could he take advantage of that? How could he, a free man, expect Jensen to willingly and happily return love that would always be imbalanced? How could he know that Jensen actually wanted and desired him, and not a savior, not a romanticized protector?

Three weeks into his search, he came home one night tired and worn out, more and more frustrated with his lack of progress. If they were a real specialist team again, it wouldn’t have been a problem; specialist teams would regularly travel the land, a deterrent against bandits and a policing force that made sure nobles and commoners alike were safe and well-treated. Traveling would have brought Cougar new resources, new people to talk to, maybe even brought him in contact with other magic-users. Tethered to a city, he could only hope that a traveler would come by that would know runic magic.

“Hey, hey Cougar,” Pooch said, taking his elbow and leading him back out of the room.

Cougar let out a heavy sigh.

“Yeah, I know, but first, this has gotta stop. You keep giving this kid mixed signals and he’s gonna just move on with his life. Second, I did something for Jensen I think he’d like.”

Curious, Cougar raised an eyebrow at Pooch.

“I think I found his sister and niece.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t know we were collecting the entire set,” Clay grumbled.

Jolene kicked his shin. “Be nice,” she ordered, sitting on the fence of the courtyard as Jensen spun his niece around in a circle. “It’s not like you couldn’t use the help of a secretary. And she’s a freewoman. Bought up her contract and got herself out.”

The team had a rare day of rest, and Cougar was nervous, jittery – something he’d never been before at all. He watched Jensen snag his sister in for a hug, holding her tight, and he bit his lip.

With the rune, Jensen was still – symbolically, at least, even though the team had tried to make it not so – a slave. Without the rune, Jensen could run wherever he wanted. He could do whatever he wanted. Hell, he _should_ run, and he should do whatever he wanted, particularly since it wasn’t _his_ fault the Duke had taught him all that information.

Roque nudged Cougar’s elbow and murmured, “You keep on thinking you got to let him go to know if he’ll come back, he’ll go just to piss you off and think you want him to keep on walking. He knows his mind, you dumbass cat. Ask him it sometime.”

The rest of the team drifted away, and Jensen’s sister – Emalia – came over and hugged him tight. “Thank you for taking care of my baby brother,” she said, tears in her eyes even as her voice was rock-steady. “He’s always needed a minder.”

Cougar shrugged uncomfortably. “What else could I do for my captor?” he asked.

“Captor?” she repeated, and then turned to Jensen with narrowed eyes. “Jake, what the hell did you do?”

He looked up from where he was sitting on the ground with his niece in his lap. “What?” he asked.

“When did you capture Cougar?” she asked, walking over to him, and Cougar watched their interaction fondly for a bit more as Jensen began explaining how Cougar and he had first met.

“There’s dinner, if you want it,” Cougar said finally, and left them alone to go find a quiet corner to silently freak out in.

The thing was, seeing Jensen with his sister and his niece, hearing him talk nonstop for ages, listening to Pooch and Roque laugh and growl in equal measure at his foolishness – he could see them as a team, a cohesive team that worked well with one another. He wanted it, and it didn’t matter what he worried about, and what he feared. Jensen was an adult, and for all that he’d made a move however many months ago, back when Cougar was tied up and Jensen was shivering in ill-fitting clothes, Jensen was clearly more mature than Cougar had initially guessed. Not all the time, of course – definitely not – but it was there, and Cougar could not do Jensen the disservice of ignoring that knowledge.

Emalia and Bethany stayed for dinner, Bethany charming Clay and Roque with ease. As they ate, Jensen regaling Bethany with wildly exaggerated tales, Emalia turned to Cougar and narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ll protect him, I know, and he can make his own decisions. But you have to understand – he’s most likely a virgin, or as close to it as he can be at his age. The one thing Max was good at was making sure people didn’t have sex. He didn’t think magic users should reproduce, and he always enjoyed controlling everything in Jake’s life.”

“How did – how did Jake – and you – come to be with the Duke?” Cougar asked quietly.

She held his gaze a long, long minute before letting out a sigh. “My mother was a maid in the previous spymaster’s household, and when Max gained the title from the Lord, he got all the household, too. She had me, I was maybe six or so, and then one of Max’s men, Wade, would not… really take no for an answer, and then she had Jake. Jake was someone who was always hyper, always running, but then one day he transformed when Wade was playing with him. Max was furious to find out not only had Wade had a child with a magic user, but that the child was not human like Wade, and took Jake aside. Oh, we’d still see him, but he was training him, making him into the perfect instrument. Whipping, leaving him chained outside for days, starvation – everything he could—”

“Jensen’s father is Wade?” Cougar whispered.

Her lips peeled back from her teeth, slit-pupil eyes snapping with anger. “If you’re going to hold that against him—”

“No, I—” Cougar stopped, and then tried not to attract much attention when he whispered even quieter, “He’s _not_ a slave?”

After a few moments, she blew out a breath and stood up, taking him by the wrist and practically dragging him out of his chair. When Roque stood up to follow she whirled on the taller man, and after a few seconds, he put up his hands and sat back down.

With a sniff, she pulled Cougar out of the room.

“Okay, obviously Jake hasn’t told any of you _anything_?” she said.

Cougar shrugged. “His story would change regularly, when he was holding me prisoner. After, I know he was interrogated by the Lord and by Clay, but I didn’t want to force him to share what he was not ready to.”

“Right. Well, then, no, Jake Jensen is freeborn. However, that doesn’t change the fact that Max treated him like a slave left and right, and Jensen’s never known any other treatment except that. He’s aware that he has no contract, nothing to hold him to Max, and Max preferred that, preferred to have a way to deny having a personal slave since he was a spymaster. He still had Jensen by him as often as possible, more as a butler and footservant whenever company was around but treating him as an actual slave whenever Max was alone. We couldn’t really report him – how would we? High-ranking nobles do things they’re not supposed to all the time. Having a slave wasn’t great but we had no proof he was treating him like this. Besides, as Jensen got older he was often gone on missions for Max. Most of these were securing trade routes and the like – Max got rich off of trade routes – but a few he worried about. He didn’t like how often Max had him watch the Lord, or memorize the layout and guard schedules at the palace. Then, well. By the time I was twenty-one, I was free to leave, and I had Beth by that time – she was maybe two or three – and he told me that if I stayed for him than he would run away and that would be worse, frankly. He’d either be taken as a spy or an actual runaway, regardless of the fact that he was slave in name only, legally speaking.” She blew out a harsh breath. “Jake is also ridiculously prideful and completely oblivious to social cues and interaction when he’s not looking to memorize information for a report. If you want something from him, you need to spell it out clearly.”

Cougar stared at her a long moment and then asked, “What is his Other form?”

“Oh no. That’s private.”

Cougar let out a displeased hiss of air.

She laughed and walked back to the doors. “What I told you wasn’t private; it’s something you need to know to understand Max and Jensen’s relationship, because you seem to be laboring under the idea that Jensen is a child. And he’s not.”

Cougar was nervous. Jensen had sat patiently and quietly while the rune-breaker had cut open skin and rubbed herbs into the cut and surrounding flesh. It had looked mildly painful, and Jensen had wiggled a bit, but now it was over, and the rune-breaker had left (after collecting his payment) and now…

Well. Cougar had arranged for the whole team to be gone, for the recruits to be far away from this training yard where the rune-breaker had set up the ritual. Now, he said hesitantly, “Would you… like to transform?”

Jensen didn’t move, still on the stool he’d been on the whole ritual and looking more and more like a statue frozen in time. Cougar didn’t want to push it, to force Jensen to do it, but this… this was a part of who Jensen was, what Jensen could do. It was something that Jensen had agreed to and consented but now, Cougar worried that Jensen had only done it to make Cougar happy, not for himself.

“Would it be better if I transform, first?” Cougar asked tentatively. When Jensen didn’t say anything, he slowly removed his own tunic and trousers, and then moved to the far side of the yard and let his Other flex under his skin.

When he was on four paws instead of two legs, he looked over and saw Jensen staring at him, eyes so full of emotion that Cougar couldn’t even identify all of them. There was sadness and fear, terror and excitement, and a slew of others that brimmed up in the corners of Jensen’s eyes.

Cautiously, Cougar approached, and Jensen stood up to meet him halfway. Those still-too-thin arms came up and hugged Cougar’s neck tightly, Jensen’s face buried in Cougar’s fur. “Thank you thank you thank you,” he whispered almost soundlessly, shaking.

Cougar purred in the back of his throat and nuzzled Jensen’s skull, then took a half-step back.

“I’m – notquitesureIcandothis,” Jensen said in a rush, chest still heaving.

Cougar settled down and put his head on his paws.

With a shaky laugh, Jensen hunched down on the ground. “Oh gods,” he gasped, and then his body jerked.

Terrified, Cougar jumped to his feet as Jensen let out a pained whimper, his skin roiling and writhing. Cougar had never seen anyone’s transformation look this bad, this long and drawn-out and pronounced, and then with a choked-off scream, Jensen’s entire body flashed with light and disappeared, leaving partly-torn clothes behind.

Cougar let out a distressed yelp, and his yelp was echoed from Jensen’s clothes.

With trepidation, Cougar approached the clothes and nosed at the folds of it until he hit at something solid. With a harder push, the solid form trembled and whined.

As delicately as he could, Cougar picked the pants up in his mouth and shook them until a light, sandy-colored form tumbled onto the hard-packed training yard with a yip.

Jensen was _adorable_.

He was some type of fox breed, black nose and too-big ears on a tiny face, skinny body hunched over and cringing. Cougar debated for all of five seconds before placing his front legs on either side of the fox and settled down to give Jensen’s coat a good grooming.

After the first couple of licks, Jensen stopped squirming so much and was beginning to relax. Gently, Cougar pulled Jensen close to his chest and nuzzled at the smaller form.

Jensen let out a chirping purr, and then began to squirm again. When Jensen didn’t stop squirming, Cougar let him go and Jensen was off like a shot – or, at least, he tried to. He was obviously unskilled with his legs and his body, and ended up in a crumpled heap mere feet away from Cougar’s legs. He immediately bounced back up and then fell again. Cougar watched him slowly gain control over his legs, glad he was in his Other form or he’d be laughing his head off, which would have been unproductive as a whole.

Eventually, Jensen got the hang of it and was racing around the yard, jumping and falling on his tail half the time. His control and agility definitely need work, but Jensen had a small body, slight and practically invisible for how small it was. The perfect scout for their group, and brilliant enough to put together great plans on the fly.

Suddenly, Jensen was barreling towards Cougar and trying to transform back at the same time – the end result had a naked Jensen tripping on his feet and flopping his bare chest onto Cougar’s head, arms flailing. Cougar let out a displeased hiss, but it was hard to hold on to his anger when Jensen scrambled back, a giant grin splitting his face open and talking so fast Cougar literally could not follow his words.

He turned back himself, and moved to go get his clothes when suddenly Jensen launched himself at Cougar again and knocked them _both_ into the dirt.

And then Jensen was kissing Cougar.

Not a small, chaste kiss, not multiple kisses that were short and numerous, not a kiss on the cheek or forehead or nose, but a deep kiss, passionate and unrestrained. Cougar was embarrassed by how quickly he got hard, and tried to shift his hips away.

Pulling back, Jensen panted, chest heaving, ears and cheeks pink. “Tell me I’m reading you right, and you want this,” he asked.

Cougar’s smile said it all – it was all he wanted from the world, and Jensen let out a triumphant shout before returning to kissing Cougar senseless.

“Any particular reason why the both of you were so filthy you needed baths drawn for you?”

Cougar didn’t move a muscle, just kept fletching more arrows, and Jensen – who was sharpening the arrowheads while leaning against Cougar’s legs – winced guiltily.

Clay looked between the two of them and threw up his hands. “If I catch you naked you’ll both be running laps for the rest of your natural lives.”

At least Jensen was smart enough to wait until Clay was out of the doorway before saying brightly, “Well, at least I can hear better now, because if he’d walked in just a few marks earlier—”

“Hush,” Cougar said mildly.

Jensen grinned that huge grin again, and Cougar found himself smiling helplessly back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have to say that I'm just a) really sorry about this whole story, really, and hope that it's at least somewhat okay, and b), I'm super excited with the art produced! Check it all out right [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4363964)!
> 
> I'm very sorry, honestly, for the whole ... thing.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for A Cougar and His Pride](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4363964) by [Shuufleur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shuufleur/pseuds/Shuufleur)




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